Yungang Grottoes

After Wutai Shan, I continued my Shanxi journey to the city of Datong, one of the ancient capitals of China and where my second world heritage site of this trip, Yungang Shiku or Yungang Grottoes which roughly translated as cloud ridge caves located. Before coming to Datong, I had heard many reports on how dusty and ugly city was, but even prepared to be open minded, Datong was quite exactly what I heard, and the worst of all was its smell, whole city smelled like a burning coal.

Since the grottoes were almost 20 kilometers from the city center, I decided to hire a taxi for whole day to take me there. My driver took me pass a few large coal mines, then he turned right in one junction and use a very new road that cut though a truly waste zone of nothing, and then suddenly I was in front of the large dusty construction site and with surprised the driver told me that "we finally arrived Yungang Shiku!" Reluctantly to admit, Yungang were the worst World Heritage Site in terms of its location as it was in the middle of ugly and dusty industrial coal mine complexes.

After paid a reasonable price of 60 Yuan for a ticket, I entered another wonderland of hundreds of grottoes. In my opinion, Yungang was one of the greatest laboratories of art in the whole world; this was the place where for almost 70 years ancient artists acted like scientists …

Dusty and dry Datong sees a fair number of western visitors due to its location relatively close to Beijing and because it's the first stop in China of the Trans-Mongolian Express. This medium-sized city has a couple of sights, of which the Yungang Grottoes are the most worthwhile. Bus 3-2 plies the 15 km from the train station and the city center to the grottoes.

It's a bit difficult to see the carvings in their right chronological order. After entering, you end up in cave 6, which is one of the most brightly painted and represents the 'Chinese' phase. Even the ceilings are full of little details. The neighbouring caves also are colourful and lively, like early versions of the Dazu rock carvings.

Walking westwards, I arrived at the five caves of the first phase. These are huge, solemn Buddha statues looking out from a window on the second floor. When you walk into the cave, you only see their legs.

Finally, I walked back to the eastern caves (1-5). Be sure not to miss these ones. Especially Cave 3 is interesting, as it is the largest cave of all. There are only 2 statues inside, but you can walk inside and enjoy the play of sunlight and shade.

My visit lasted about 2 hours, enough to take in all the major caves in detail and walk around once more to take it all in from a distance. After having visited Dazu and Longmen, I think …

My 4th and final review of Buddhist caves/grottos on the UNESCO list in China has reached Yungang near Datong (ref reviews of Mogao, Longmen and Dazu).

This too was visited by me as early as 1978. However for some reason or another it has registered less in my mind than Longmen, visited just a few days earlier. Perhaps the novelty of looking at Buddhist statues had worn off or perhaps I was still recovering from having, earlier that morning, visited the “Anti-Nuclear Tunnels” at a cake factory in Datong! There we had been told that Mao Tse Tung had said in his teachings on preparation for war and natural disasters “Dig tunnels deep, stock greens (vegetables?) everywhere and never seek hegemony” (there is no answer to that!). So the 335 workers in the factory had spent 4 years working in their spare time without payment to dig 1500 metres of tunnel. These they showed us with understandable pride. They had created kitchens, dormitories, meeting rooms and a “cleaning room” for nuclear, chemical and biological agents - and still had plans for more!! Somehow the futility of this human endeavour cast a shadow on the results, albeit more beautiful, resulting from effort, but possibly equally futile, spent carving out and painting over 50000 Buddha statues in nearby cliffs at Yungang!! There our guide had told us that the temples were the result of the “Exploiting classes of former rulers who used Buddhism to imprison people’s minds” - but this seemed …