Based on Dali history (with great arrangement) and on stories about the Taoist Cave in Higherland Inn, the English actor Angus Brown composed the following story after a one-month stay in 2003.
A huge 'Thanks' to him and all the other people (Vicky, Nicky, John and Mary...) who stayed around the fire listening to the story...

The little Cave

A long long time ago, way before you can remember, many many moons, before the first telephone, the first car or the first steam train. And a long long time before that...There was a Giant. He wasn't just a Giant; he was the largest toughest most dreaded and feared Giant there ever was! His name was Heng-Hui. No one really knows where he was from, some say he was from the ocean, and some say he flew from the sky. One thing was for sure, he was a mighty Giant. Legend had it that Heng Hui could crush a whole town with his heel, and that temples crumbled to the ground when he sneezed.

One day as he wandered in Northern Sichuan, he felt a pain in his left leg, he took a step forward to look down and see what it was, he felt a pain in his right leg. Suddenly with dismay, Heng Hui the mighty Giant realized he had been captured by the Great Emperor of the Tang Dynasty – Tangtaizong. Tangtaizong had ordered 10,000 men to capture him by using two huge wooden traps, hundreds of feet high. They pulled Heng Hui to the ground.

For Ten years they kept Henghui in an enormous specially built dungeon, and using ancient dark arts, they gradually made the Giant humble. They crushed his wild spirit and he became the faithful servant of Tangtaizong. Eventually he was released from the dungeons and he sat by the Emperors side. A mascot of the Great Tang Dynasty. Meanwhile in the province of Yunnan, there was unrest amongst the Bai people who lived beside the gray mountains and the jade lake of Dali. Tangtaizong, the Emperor heard of this unrest and said: "SHIN ZHAO BU ZIN QUADO" – which means "I WILL NOT HAVE THIS DISOBEDIENCE!" So Tangtaizong sent ten thousand men to Dali to crush the naughty Bai people, But the Bai people were strong spirited people, and sent the Tang armies back to Sichuan with their weapons in places. Chinese warriors wouldn't normally have put their weapons. In Dali, the Bai people were overjoyed and declared a national holiday. Thousands of people took to their boats and had a party on the lake for several weeks.

Emperor Tangtaizong was beside himself with fury and kicked several of his closest servants in frustration. In his wrath he turned to his faithful Giant Henghui and said:"ZAN DA DAN BU, GADE XU CHI GA. NERSHEJJLE BENEL GRANKE GUDOL", which means; crush those ungrateful Bai Bastards!

Now Henghui was a very big man, a giant in fact, and his legs were very long and so in a matter of minutes he traveled from Northern Sichuan to Dali, Yunnan, and stood hands on hips next to Erhai Lake and said in his big booming voice : "PEOPLE OF BAI I COME FROM EMPEROR Tangtaizong – LEADER OF THE MIGHTY DYNASTY. YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES: EITHER YOU SWEAR ALLEGIENCE TO TANGTAIZONG TO SERVE HIM FOREVER OR I WILL DRINK THIS LAKE AND SPIT IT OUT AND YOU WILL ALL DROWN IN YOUR OWN DEFIANCE – For a whole minute, the people of Dali froze in fear and dread at the anger and size of the biggest and most dreadful thing they had ever seen.