石窟艺术

Why this place

From the fourth century onward, Buddhist cave temples were carved across northern and western China — a continuous tradition that produced the giant Buddhas at Yungang and Leshan, the 100,000 figures at Longmen and the painted caves at Dunhuang. Because they are cut in rock and painted in mineral pigment, the sites preserve a record of Central Asian and Chinese Buddhist art that has no parallel.

What to see

• Mogao at Dunhuang — painting and sculpture, the greatest of all the sites
• Yungang at Datong — the earliest monumental Chinese Buddhist sculpture
• Longmen at Luoyang — the Vairocana Buddha and the largest number of figures
• Bingling Temple in Gansu, and the Kizil caves in Xinjiang for the earliest layer
• Dazu in Chongqing, where Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian figures share the same cliff

What to eat

• The cities near each site have their own cooking — Xinjiang's lamb, Gansu's noodles, Henan's soups
• Vegetarian temple food at the sites that still have monasteries

How to plan

Three or four of these sites make a proper trip; Mogao alone is worth flying to Dunhuang for.

Best time

May–October for the northern sites; Dunhuang and Dazu are good in spring and autumn

Practical tips

• Photography is restricted or forbidden inside the painted caves to protect the pigments — the replica caves at the visitor centres are the way to see the best ones