Yungang grottoes

Wednesday morning. The main reason why we decided to go to Datong was to go the Yungang grottoes. To get to the grottoes we could take the taxi which would take us 25 minutes or 90 minutes in the bus. A taxi delivered us to the not so world famous but should be much more famous; the Yungang grottoes, since 2001 UNESCO world heritage listed.

A little history: During the Wei dynasty (398 AD) Datong was the capital of China. We are going to see more of this later. The Emperor ordered the carving of several Buddhist statues. The biggest is roughly 23m in height equivalent to an 8 story building and this with several others statues only slightly smaller, maybe 6 story buildings. The excavation and carvings took 150 years to complete. There are 45 major caves, 252 large and small cave shrines. More than 59.000 stone carvings. The Chinese are (and have been for a long time) diligent and industrious people. The carvings are very important in the history and evolvement of style in Buddhist sculptures in China. In these carvings are Indian and Greek influences on the sculptures still very visible. These influences came along the silk routes to China. The silk route in medieval times was a kind of globalisation of that era. I might dedicate an extension on all this in the future. This will have to do for now.

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