Mark Gibson

Longmen Grottos

Posted on May 5th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.

The Long Men complex is near to Louyang one of the seven ancient capitals of China I think this was one of the Wei Dynasties. As I had just finished Bamber Gascoignes Chinese Dynasties I was capable of showing off to our guide whose services we had hired for the day. Beijing, Nanjing, Anying, Luoyang, Hangzhou, Xian.This was the hottest day I’d had in China sharing it with many Chinese tourists as we wound our way panting up the staircases lining the cliffs walls of the Yi river, past hundreds of thousands of buddhist images carved into the limestone. Some images over 17.5m in height others no larger than a fingernail. The larger images carved as a means of worship or dedication for various members of the royal family, the smaller images were the ones permitted to the merely wealthy. Some of the images were headless due to the changing religious proclivities of Chinas rulers, oscillating between the indiginous Daoist religion and its richer foreign import.

The opposite side of the river has a number of other images but we passed these and pressed on up the cliff to the temple at the top a garden which looks out over the river.

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