China Guide
The Yellow River
The Yungang Caves
Opening time: Daily 8am–6.30pm
Price: ¥60
Address: 16km west of Datong on bus#3-2 from the train station
The monumental Yungang Caves, a set of Buddhist grottoes carved into the side of a sandstone cliff, are a must. Built around 400 AD at a time of Buddhist revival, the caves were the first and grandest of the three major Buddhist grottoes (the latter two being the Longmen Caves in Luoyang and the Mogao Caves in Gansu); they also remain the best preserved. Arranged in three clusters and numbered east to west from 1 to 51, the caves originally spread across an area more than 15km long, though today just a kilometre-long fragment survives.
The caves were made by first hollowing out a section at the top of the cliff, then digging into the rock, down to the ground and out, leaving two holes, one above the other. As many as forty thousand craftsmen worked on the project, coming from as far as India and Central Asia, and there is much foreign influence in the carvings: Greek motifs (tridents and acanthus leaves), Persian symbols (lions and weapons), and bearded figures, even images of the Hindu deities Shiva and Vishnu, are incorporated among the more common dragons and phoenixes of Chinese origin. Originally the cave entrances would have been covered with wooden facades, and the sculptures would have been faced with plaster and brightly painted; the larger sculptures are pitted with regular holes, which would once have held wooden supports on which the plaster face was built.
The most spectacular caves are numbers 5–13, dense with monumental sculpture. Being suddenly confronted and dwarfed by a huge, seventeen-metre-high Buddha as you walk into cave 5, his gold face shining softly in the half-light, is an awesome, humbling experience. Other Buddhas of all sizes, a heavenly gallery, are massed in niches, which honeycomb the grotto's gently curving walls. Cave 6 is equally arresting. The high, square chamber is dominated by a thick central pillar carved with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in deep relief, surrounded by flying Buddhist angels and musicians. The vertical grotto walls are alive with images, including reliefs depicting incidents from the life of the Buddha.