Yungang Grottoes
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The Yungang Grottoes is listed a UNESCO World Heritage Site with the description “masterpiece of early Chinese Buddhist cave art... [and] ...represent the successful fusion of Buddhist religious symbolic art from south and central Asia with Chinese cultural traditions, starting in the 5th century CE under Imperial auspices.”
The Yungang cave is located 16km south-west of Datong city, in the valley of the Shi Li river at the base of the Wuzhou Shan Mountains; and can be reached for 30 minutes car. This is excellent examples of rock-cut architecture and one of the three most famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China; the others are Mogao, Longmen and Maijishan. The grotto was excavated along the mountain, extending 1km from east to west, revealing 53caves and over 51,000 stone sculptures.
These stone carvings are from the 5th and 6th centuries, when China was below the control of Northern Wei. Buddhist arrived at the city Datong along the ancient North Silk Road, and the artists developed traditional art melded with social features of Northern Wei. And the monk who in charge of the construction of Longmen cave is monk Tanyao.
The historians also judged from the shapes, status content and styles of caves, and divided into early, middle and late Wei in total of three periods. Pagodas dominate the eastern parts; west caves are small and mid-sized with niches. Caves in the middle are made up of front and back chambers with Buddha statues in the center. Embossing covers walls and ceilings.
The largest cave is in No.6, which is 20 meters in height, and standing 15-meter high pagoda like column Buddha status and carvings. And other caves worth attention are No.16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. And for the purpose of preventing the sculptures, photography are forbidden inside the caves.
