On Chinese Loess Plateau, rain sneaks through cracks, hollows underground tunnels and suddenly collapses the roof, carving house-sized sinkholes. Airborne and handheld laser scanner now map 1194 of these sinkholes in one basin, showing they have quietly swallowed 345 000 t of soil. The open dataset gives the world its first high-resolution case study for mapping and managing loess sinkholes, proving that this soil-piping process deserves urgent attention, not neglect.