longmen caves

our primary reason for visiting the city of luoyang is its proximity to the invaluable Unesco World Heritage site of longmen caves. positioned only 7 miles outside of the city, it made for an amazing daytrip and site to see. the grottoes at longmen constitute one of china's few surviving masterpeices of buddhist rock carving. the carvings took over 200 years to complete and consist of over 2,300 caves and niches, 100,000 buddhist images, and 2,800 peices of inscriptions. the images of buddha and his disciples emerge from over a kilometer of limestone cliff wall along the two banks of the yi river. in the early 20th century, many of the statues were beheaded by collectors, or simply extracted whole, many ending up abroad. some sculptures are slowly being returned and heads are are being restored to their severed necks. unfortunately, many statues have had their faces crudely smashed off, deliberate defacement that dates back to the dark days of the cultural revolution.

aside from the few chinese tourists, david and i felt as if we had the site to ourselves. we enjoyed a peaceful day seeing such a beautifully maintained and thoughfully presented site. we ended the outing by visiting the fengxian temple, the largest structure at longmen. we made a donation and rang the bell 6 times for the sake of health and longevity.

alina