The Yungang Grottoes~At first sight, the millennia-old smile seems as if we had encountered in a past life

The Yungang Grottoes~At first sight, the millennia-old smile seems as if we had encountered in a past life. The Yungang Grottoes are one of the largest grottoes in China, and together with the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, and the Maijishan Grottoes, they are known as the four great grotto art treasures of China.... Located 16 kilometers west of Datong City in Shanxi Province, at the southern foot of Wuzhou Mountain, they stretch about one kilometer from east to west, with a majestic presence and rich content: the tallest Buddha statue is 17 meters high (located in the main shrine of Cave 5, representing Sakyamuni Buddha) and the smallest is only 2 centimeters (located in the middle layer of the western wall in the antechamber of Cave 9), making it the largest grotto group in China.... There are currently 45 main caves, 252 large and small niches, and over 51,000 statues, representing the outstanding Buddhist grotto art of China from the 5th to 6th centuries AD.... The early Tan Yao Five Caves (Caves 16-20) were supervised by the high monk Tan Yao, with a rigorous and unified layout design, and are classic masterpieces of the first peak period of Chinese Buddhist art, which were inscribed on the World Heritage List in December 2001... The middle period (Caves 1-15) were mainly constructed on a large scale by the royal family... The later period consists of caves after Cave 20, mainly constructed by the public. After the Northern Wei Dynasty moved its capital to Luoyang, the history of the royal family's large-scale construction of Buddha statues at Yungang also came to an end... The historical heritage of the Yungang Grottoes is profound, with over 1500 years of history. If you also love history, Buddhist culture, Buddha statues, and ancient architecture, then it will definitely be worth the journey....