Cave Temples of China: Reading the Cliff, West to East

01Reading the Cliff

What are the cave temples of China, and in what order should you see them?

The cave temples 石窟 of China are the footprints Buddhism left as it walked in along the Silk Road, and you can read them like a book, west to east and early to late. At Kizil 克孜尔石窟 the Buddha has a Greek face; at Yungang 云冈石窟 he has an emperor's; at Longmen 龙门石窟 he puts on a Chinese robe; at Maijishan 麦积山石窟 he learns to smile; at Dazu 大足石刻 he starts telling stories. Stand in front of any cliff and ask one question first: which century is this?

The book has an order. The oldest caves are in the far west, at Kucha 龟兹 in Xinjiang 新疆, cut from the third century by a kingdom that had Buddhism before China did. The road runs east through the Gansu 甘肃 corridor, where a small kingdom at Wuwei 武威 set the pattern in the early fifth century, where the earliest dated inscription in any Chinese cave, of 420, is at Bingling 炳灵寺石窟 above the Yellow River, and where Dunhuang 敦煌 kept painting for a thousand years. It reaches the northern capitals at Yungang in 460 and Longmen in 493, the two imperial sites, and runs on into the sixth century at Xiangtangshan 响堂山石窟 and the Tang at Tianlongshan 天龙山石窟. Then the north stops and the south begins: the giant at Leshan 乐山 in the eighth century, the kings of Yunnan 云南 at Shizhongshan 石钟山石窟 in the ninth, and the last flowering at Anyue 安岳石刻 and Dazu in Sichuan 四川 between the ninth century and the thirteenth, where the Buddha shares a cliff with Confucius 孔子 and Laozi 老子 and the carvings tell you stories about hell and your parents.

Three kinds of looking. Some caves you look up at: the seventy-one-metre Buddha at Leshan 乐山大佛, the twenty-seven-metre one at Bingling, the twenty-metre one at Xumishan 须弥山石窟. Some you walk into with a guide and a torch, because the art is painted on the walls and the caves are kept dark: Mogao 莫高窟, Yulin Caves 榆林窟, Kizil. And some you climb, on wooden walkways bolted to a cliff eighty metres high at Maijishan or through tunnels cut inside the rock at Mati 马蹄寺石窟. Know which you are going to, because it changes the shoes, the time and whether you need to book.

Some pages are missing. Between 1902 and the nineteen-twenties, expeditions from Germany, Japan, Britain and the United States cut murals from the walls at Kizil and Bezeklik 柏孜克里克石窟 and sawed heads from the statues at Xiangtangshan and Tianlongshan. They are in Berlin, Tokyo, New York and Washington, and half the Berlin murals were destroyed in the war. The page says at each site what is gone, and records the head that came home in 2021.

The eighteen on this page are the survey's choice: five great sites inscribed on their own, two more inscribed with the Silk Road in 2014, and eleven that hardly any foreigner has heard of, seven of them in Gansu alone. Photography is forbidden inside almost every cave on the page; the torch is the guide's, and the visit is slower and quieter than anything else in Chinese heritage.

02The Road In

What are the Kizil, Bezeklik and Tiantishan caves, and why do they matter?

Three sites in Xinjiang 新疆 and the Gansu 甘肃 corridor are the first chapters, and the survey is honest that they are the hardest to reach and the most damaged. They are where the style that filled Dunhuang 敦煌 and Yungang 云冈石窟 was worked out.

Kizil 克孜尔石窟, the beginning. Seventy kilometres from Kuqa 库车, in a valley of the Tianshan foothills, the kingdom of Kucha 龟兹 cut caves from the third century, a hundred years before Dunhuang by the survey's count, and painted them in a manner found nowhere else: ceilings divided into diamond lattices, each cell holding a scene from the Buddha's earlier lives, in blues from lapis and a style that mixes India, Persia and the Greek east. The cave of musicians has twenty-eight groups of players. Between 1906 and 1914 a German expedition removed five hundred square metres of these walls by the survey's figure, and the survey notes the site is better known in the West, where the pieces are, than in China. Two hours, no booking, a small ticket, and a long drive.

Bezeklik 柏孜克里克石窟, the Uyghur 维吾尔族 court. Forty-five kilometres from Turpan 吐鲁番, in the red gorge of the Flaming Mountains 火焰山 that every Chinese child knows from the story of the Monkey King 孙悟空, the Uyghur kingdom of Gaochang 高昌, Buddhist between the ninth century and the thirteenth, kept its royal temple in a row of caves above a river. The murals showed the kingdom's nobles as donors in their own dress, the finest Uyghur Buddhist painting there is by the survey's account, and between 1902 and 1914 German teams took four hundred square metres of them to Berlin, where half were destroyed in 1945. What remains is fragmentary and the setting is magnificent. An hour and a half, no booking.

Tiantishan 天梯山石窟, the ancestor. Fifty kilometres from Wuwei 武威, an hour by car with no bus, the kings of the short-lived Northern Liang 北凉 cut caves between 412 and 439 that the survey calls the ancestor of Chinese grottoes: it was here that the Central Asian manner was married to Chinese hands into what scholars call the Liangzhou model 凉州模式, and when the Northern Wei 北魏 conquered the kingdom in 439 they marched its craftsmen east to build Yungang. A fifteen-metre Tang Buddha sits in the largest cave with six attendants. In 1959 a reservoir was built across the valley, the murals and statues of the smaller caves were moved to museums, and the big Buddha was left behind a dam, the largest relocation in the history of Chinese cave conservation by the survey's account. An hour, no booking.

Why start here. Everything at Yungang and Dunhuang that looks foreign, the faces, the lattices, the blue, arrived by this road. Seeing the three first makes the famous sites legible; seeing them after makes them look like drafts, which they were.

03Dunhuang: Mogao and the Quiet Sister

How do you visit the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, and what are the Yulin Caves?

Mogao 莫高窟 is the one everyone knows and it deserves it: a thousand years of painting on forty-five thousand square metres of wall, in a cliff at the edge of the desert. The visit is strictly managed and must be booked a month ahead. Its sister site at Yulin Caves 榆林窟 has the same keepers, murals the survey rates higher for one period, and a twentieth of the visitors.

What Mogao is. Twenty-five kilometres from Dunhuang 敦煌, a monk named Lezun 乐僔 cut the first cave in 366, by tradition, having seen the cliff shine with a thousand Buddhas, and for a thousand years after him, through ten dynasties by the survey's count, monks, merchants and governors paid to have caves cut and painted: some seven hundred survive, four hundred and ninety-two with murals and statues. The painting runs without a break from the fourth century to the fourteenth, so that walking from one cave to the next is walking through the history of Chinese art, from Central Asian figures in thin robes to Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century courts in full colour to the last Mongol-era work. In 1900 a Taoist caretaker found a sealed cave holding tens of thousands of manuscripts and paintings from before the eleventh century; most went to London, Paris and elsewhere over the next decade, and the story is told on site without softening. In the nineteen-forties the painter Zhang Daqian 张大千 lived here for two years copying two hundred and seventy-six murals by the survey's count, and made the place famous in China.

How the visit works. The caves are dark, sealed with doors, and opened by a guide with a torch for a small group; you will see eight or so on a standard ticket, chosen by the academy that day, and pay extra for the special caves. Nothing may be photographed inside. The ticket must be booked online about a month ahead in season, by the survey's account, and the day begins with two films in the visitor centre before the buses to the cliff. Three to four hours; the price is the highest on this page.

Yulin Caves, the sister. A hundred and fifty kilometres east near Guazhou 瓜州, in a canyon on a river, forty-odd caves under the same academy hold work of the same periods with, the survey says, about one visitor for every twenty at Mogao. Its treasure is the painting of the Western Xia 西夏, the Tangut kingdom of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and in particular the Water-Moon Guanyin 水月观音 of cave two, a figure on a rock over water under a moon that the survey calls one of the most beautiful paintings in Chinese art, and a thousand-armed Guanyin in cave three. The special caves are by reservation and the guide will open them to a group of two. An hour and a half to two, a modest ticket, a car from Dunhuang.

Do both if you can: Mogao for the thousand years and Yulin Caves for the single hour of looking at one wall in silence that Mogao's crowds no longer allow.

04The River and the Clay Cliff

What are the Bingling and Maijishan grottoes?

Two sites in Gansu 甘肃, both inscribed with the Silk Road in 2014, are the ones to see after Dunhuang 敦煌: one reached by boat up a gorge of the Yellow River, the other climbed on walkways up a cliff of clay figures with the best smiles in Chinese sculpture.

Bingling 炳灵寺石窟, by boat. Seventy-five kilometres from Lanzhou 兰州, the road ends at a reservoir and a boat takes you up the river between red cliffs to a bend where, from the year 420, monks and pilgrims cut caves into the rock. The inscription of that year in cave one hundred and sixty-nine is the earliest date written in any cave in China, the survey says, and the measure against which every other early site is dated; the monk Faxian 法显 passed on his way to India in 405. Above the river sits a seated Tang Buddha of twenty-seven metres, and the caves around it run from the fifth century to the Ming 明, 14th to 17th century. Three hours with the boat, no booking, and the water level decides the season.

Maijishan 麦积山石窟, on the walkways. Forty-five kilometres from Tianshui 天水, a single hill shaped like a haystack rises from the forest with its whole face honeycombed with caves, reached by stairs and galleries bolted to the rock eighty metres up. The art here is clay: seven thousand eight hundred figures by the survey's count, modelled over twelve dynasties from the fifth century, and the survey calls the hill China's sculpture gallery. The faces of the sixth century, in caves like forty-four, wear what the literature calls the Eastern smile 东方微笑, a serene half-smile that the survey rates unmatched elsewhere. One cave is a tomb: the story goes that an empress of the Western Wei, forced to take her own life in 540, was buried here by her son. The upper galleries are exposed and the drop is real; go in dry weather. Two to three hours, booking advised.

What the two teach. The road did not run only through the desert. Buddhism came up the Yellow River as well as along the corridor, and the clay at Maijishan shows what happened when a Central Asian art met a region with no good stone: it modelled instead of carving, and the modelling is softer, and the smile is the result.

05The Emperor as Buddha: Yungang

What is special about the Yungang Grottoes at Datong?

The first great imperial caves in China were cut by a dynasty of nomads, and the Buddhas have the faces of its emperors. Yungang 云冈石窟, outside Datong 大同 in Shanxi 山西, is where the art that came down the corridor was taken over by the state.

Who and when. The Northern Wei 北魏, a people from the steppe who ruled north China from Datong, had destroyed Buddhism in 446 and restored it in 452; the monk in charge of the restoration, Tanyao 昙曜, persuaded the emperor in 460 to cut five great caves in a sandstone cliff sixteen kilometres west of the capital, one for each of the dynasty's emperors, with a Buddha in each to be understood as the emperor himself. The survey calls the idea the emperor as Buddha, and it ran through Chinese imperial cave-cutting for the next three centuries. Work went on until 524; by the survey's count the cliff holds fifty-nine thousand figures in forty-five major caves.

What you see. The five caves of Tanyao are the ones to stand in front of: colossal seated and standing Buddhas, the largest seventeen metres, with the broad shoulders, straight noses and heavy-lidded eyes of the Gandharan 犍陀罗 art of the Indian north-west, which had come down the road through Kucha 龟兹. This is the Buddha before he became Chinese, and the survey calls the faces raw and powerful. Later caves, six above all, are different: a central pillar carved into a tower, walls covered in thirty-three relief scenes of the Buddha's life, and figures in Chinese court dress, cut after the court had ordered its nobles to dress as Chinese. The change from cave twenty to cave six is the change from the steppe to China in one walk.

How to visit. Three hours, booking advised, sixteen kilometres from the city by bus or taxi; a museum at the entrance, and the caves themselves open to the air behind wooden galleries, so that unlike Dunhuang 敦煌 you see them in daylight and may photograph the exteriors. It was inscribed in 2001. The geographer who wrote the classic description of China's rivers in the sixth century described these caves, the survey notes, and they have not moved.

The pairing that makes sense of the page is Yungang with Longmen 龙门石窟: the same dynasty, the same idea, thirty-three years apart, before and after it moved its capital south and decided to become Chinese.

06The Chinese Robe: Longmen

How do you visit the Longmen Grottoes, and who is the great Buddha?

When the Northern Wei 北魏 moved their capital to Luoyang 洛阳 in 493 they began a new cliff on the river south of the city, and over the next three centuries the Buddha there put on Chinese clothes and, under the Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century, a Chinese smile. Longmen 龙门石窟 is the most walkable of the great sites and the one where the change is easiest to see.

Two banks, four centuries. The Yi River 伊河 runs between two limestone hills six kilometres south of Luoyang, and the caves are cut into both banks, a hundred thousand figures by the survey's count and more inscriptions than any site in China, some two thousand eight hundred, which is why calligraphers come here as much as Buddhists. The west bank is the early work: the Guyang 古阳洞 cave begun after 493, with the twenty inscriptions that every student of Chinese writing learns, and the Binyang 宾阳洞 caves of the early sixth century, where the figures have lost their steppe faces and wear the loose robes and broad sashes of a Chinese scholar. The survey calls it the central plains model, and it is the second step of the book.

The great Buddha. Halfway along the west bank, in an open cliff called the Fengxian 奉先寺 temple, sits the Vairocana 卢舍那 Buddha of the Tang, seventeen metres high, carved in the six seventies with a full face, half-closed eyes and a faint smile that the survey reports the Chinese call the eastern Mona Lisa. The story goes that the empress Wu Zetian 武则天 paid for it with her cosmetics allowance and that the face is hers; what is certain is the date and the quality, which the survey rates the summit of Tang sculpture. The attendants and guardians on either side, muscles and armour, are the same period.

The walk. Cross the bridge to the east bank for the later Tang caves and the view back across the water at the whole west cliff, then return through the garden of the poet Bai Juyi 白居易, who is buried at the far end. Three to four hours, booking advised, a small entry fee; the site is a park and a museum as well as a cliff, and both are on their own pages. It was inscribed in 2000.

The order that matters is west bank first, north to south, so that you meet the sixth century before the seventh; that way the Fengxian Buddha arrives as the end of a sentence rather than a monument on its own.

07The Missing Heads

Where are the missing heads of the Xiangtangshan and Tianlongshan grottoes?

Two royal cave sites of the sixth and seventh centuries, one in Hebei 河北 and one in Shanxi 山西, hold the finest sculpture of their periods and almost none of its heads. They are the pages of the book that were torn out, and the survey keeps them for that reason as much as for what is left.

Xiangtangshan 响堂山石窟, the twenty-seven years. Forty kilometres from Handan 邯郸, on two hills called north and south, the Northern Qi 北齐, a dynasty that lasted from 550 to 577, cut its only great caves, and the survey calls them the single surviving body of art of that short reign. The importance is in the transition: the figures have moved on from the thin, elongated scholars of the Wei and have not reached the full-bodied Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century: a rounder, calmer style in between, with drapery that clings and a stillness the survey singles out. The largest cave on the northern hill may have been intended as the tomb chamber of the dynasty's founder. In the early twentieth century dealers sawed the heads and reliefs from the walls, and the survey lists the Metropolitan Museum and the Freer in Washington as the places where whole galleries of them now stand. Two hours, no booking, the cheapest tickets on the page, and empty.

Tianlongshan 天龙山石窟, the return. Thirty-six kilometres from Taiyuan 太原 in a wooded valley, caves cut from 534 by the same founder and continued under the Qi and the Tang hold Tang figures that the survey and much of the literature rate as the finest Tang cave sculpture in China, bodies turned and relaxed under thin cloth in a manner scholars named the Tianlongshan style. In the nineteen-twenties more than a hundred heads and figures were cut away and sold, and the survey lists Tokyo and New York among their homes. In 2021 the head of a Buddha from cave eight came back from Japan and was shown on the national New Year broadcast, and the site has become the emblem of the country's campaign to recover what was taken. Two hours, no booking, an eight-metre Maitreya 弥勒 in cave nine, and a cool walk.

How to look at them. Bring the photographs. Both sites publish, and the survey reproduces, images of the caves as they were, and the guides will show you on a phone where each missing head belongs. The bodies that remain are enough to see the style, and the empty necks are their own lesson in what a century of trade in antiquities did to a cliff.

08The Forgotten Corridor

Which cave temples in Gansu and Ningxia do tourists never see?

Between Dunhuang 敦煌 and the imperial sites lies a belt of caves that almost nobody visits, in the hills of Ningxia 宁夏 and eastern Gansu 甘肃 and in the Qilian mountains above Zhangye 张掖. Three of them hold a twenty-metre Buddha, a fifteen-metre hall and a cliff you climb from the inside.

Xumishan 须弥山石窟, the northern road. Fifty-five kilometres from Guyuan 固原, a town the survey notes most foreign travellers have never heard of, the northern branch of the Silk Road passed a gate in the hills, and from the late fifth century monks cut a hundred and sixty-two caves into the red sandstone by the survey's count. The prize is a Tang Buddha of the seventh century, twenty metres high, seated in the open in cave five and visible across the valley; the scholars' prize is a group of caves of the Northern Zhou 北周, a dynasty of the five seventies, which the survey calls the only systematic body of that period's carving anywhere. Two hours, no booking, and you may have the valley to yourself.

Beishikusi 北石窟寺, the seven Buddhas. Twenty-five kilometres from Qingyang 庆阳 in the loess hills of eastern Gansu, a provincial governor of the Northern Wei 北魏 cut in 509 one of the largest caves of his dynasty, a hall fifteen metres high holding the seven Buddhas of the past, each larger than a man, in a cliff that the survey calls a cathedral in the wilderness. He cut a sister cave at Jingchuan 泾川 the same year. Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century figures fill the smaller caves. An hour and a half, no booking, a small ticket, and the survey records virtually no visitors.

Mati 马蹄寺石窟, the cliff you climb inside. Sixty-five kilometres south of Zhangye, in the Qilian mountains among the herding villages of the Yugur 裕固族, a people found nowhere else in China, a row of temples and caves has been cut since the Northern Liang 北凉 of the fifth century, Chinese Buddhist first and Tibetan Buddhist since the Yuan. The site to see is the Thirty-three Heavens 三十三天: twenty-one caves in seven tiers inside a vertical cliff, joined by stairs and tunnels cut through the rock, so that you climb the cliff from within and come out at the top, a hanging honeycomb by the survey's description. Two hours away by car, a separate cave at Jinta 金塔寺, opened only by telephone booking days ahead, holds high-relief clay flying figures that the survey dates three centuries before Dunhuang's. Three to four hours for the main site, a combined ticket with the shuttle 观光车, a car from the city.

Why bother. Because the three between them show what the great sites leave out: the Northern Zhou, the loess country, the Tibetan overlay, and the ordinary provincial patronage that cut most of the caves in China. And because in all three you will hear your own footsteps.

09The Giant: Leshan

How big is the Leshan Giant Buddha, and how should you see it?

One cave site on the page is a single figure, and it is the largest stone Buddha in the world. Leshan 乐山 is the eighth-century chapter, the Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century idea of a Buddha as engineering, and the most visited place in this section after Longmen 龙门石窟.

What it is. Where three rivers meet below the city of Leshan in Sichuan 四川, a monk named Haitong 海通 began in 713 to cut a seated Maitreya 弥勒 out of the red cliff, the story goes to calm the water that was drowning boatmen at the confluence; he died with the work unfinished and a provincial governor completed it in 803, ninety years after the first cut. The figure is seventy-one metres from head to foot, the largest by the survey's account, with ears seven metres long and a foot a hundred people can stand on. The genius is invisible: a system of drains cut into the hair, the shoulders and the folds of the robe carries rainwater away inside the rock, and it is the reason the survey gives for the figure's survival through twelve centuries of Sichuan rain.

How to see it. There are two ways and the survey recommends both if there is time. The first is the cliff path: down a stair cut into the rock beside the Buddha from the head to the feet, slow, crowded at weekends, with the face above you the whole way. The second is the boat: from the river the whole figure and the two guardian carvings beside it appear at once, which is the only way to see it as its makers meant. Two to three hours for the path, booking advised, a modest ticket; the boat is extra and short. The mountain behind, with its temples and paths, is on the parks page, and the cliff tombs of the Han 汉, 2nd century BC to 3rd century AD beside the south gate, with what the survey calls the earliest Buddha image in China, are on the tombs page.

What it is not. The Buddha at Bamiyan is gone; the survey lists a reclining Buddha of twenty-three metres at Anyue 安岳石刻 and a seated one at Rongxian 荣县大佛 as the nearest Chinese cousins, and sends anyone who wants the giant idea without the crowd to Rongxian. Leshan itself is best at opening time on a weekday, and worst on a Chinese public holiday, when the cliff stair becomes a queue.

Read it as a page and it is the moment when the Chinese Buddha stopped being a figure in a cave and became a landmark, part of a river and a city, which is what the southern chapters that follow are about.

10The Last Peak: Dazu and Anyue

What are the Dazu Rock Carvings, and what is Anyue?

When the north stopped cutting caves at the end of the Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century, Sichuan 四川 carried on for four more centuries, and the last great chapter of the book is the one where the Buddha learns to tell stories, shares his cliff with Confucius 孔子 and Laozi 老子, and looks like your neighbour.

Dazu 大足石刻, the summit. A hundred kilometres west of Chongqing 重庆, on a ring of hills, carving began in 892 and went on into the twelve fifties, three hundred and sixty years, and the survey calls the result the last peak of Chinese cave art. The two sites to see are Baoding 宝顶山 and Beishan 北山. Baoding is the work of one monk, Zhao Zhifeng 赵智凤, who spent seventy years from the twelve hundreds laying out a single continuous sermon in stone around a horseshoe valley: the wheel of rebirth 六道轮回图, nearly eight metres across, held in the teeth of a demon; a reclining Buddha thirty-one metres long; scenes of parents raising children and of what happens to the unfilial in hell, with a drunkard, a cattle herd, a woman feeding a baby. It is carving you read like a comic strip, and the survey notes it was meant to be. On a third hill three niches hold Buddha, Laozi and Confucius side by side, the only cave site in China to do so by the survey's account. Four to five hours for both hills, booking advised, a combined ticket. It was inscribed in 1999.

Anyue 安岳石刻, the source. A hundred and fifty kilometres from Chengdu 成都, the county of Anyue has more carvings than any place in China by the survey's count, a hundred thousand figures at more than two hundred sites, most of them in fields and on farm tracks, and Zhao Zhifeng learned his trade here before he went to Dazu. Three are worth the drive: a seated Guanyin 观音 of the Northern Song 宋, 10th to 13th century, three metres high, one knee raised, so graceful that the survey reports the Chinese call her the Eastern Venus; a reclining Buddha of the Tang, twenty-three metres, carved lying on his left side across a hill; and a cave of twelve bodhisattvas of the eleventh century. The sites are scattered, each with its own small ticket, and the survey allows four to six hours by car and reports one visitor for every hundred at Dazu.

What changed. The northern caves were cut for emperors and monks and show the Buddha as a lord; the Sichuan cliffs were cut for farmers and townspeople and show him as a teacher with a story to tell about their own lives. That is the end of the book, and it is the friendliest chapter for anyone who has never opened it.

11The Kings of Yunnan

What are the Shizhongshan grottoes near Dali?

One cave site on the page belongs to no Chinese dynasty. In the hills of Dali 大理, a kingdom that stood beside the Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century and the Song 宋, 10th to 13th century for five hundred years carved its own kings, and they are the only portraits of them that exist.

Shizhongshan 石钟山石窟. Twenty-five kilometres from Jianchuan 剑川 and a hundred and twenty from Dali, on a mountain of red sandstone called Shibao 石宝山, the kingdom of Nanzhao 南诏 and its successor Dali cut sixteen caves between 850 and the twelfth century. Two of them are courts: the king Yimouxun 异牟寻 seated in council with his ministers, and the king Geluofeng 阁逻凤 on procession with a retinue of sixteen, in the dress of their own court and not of China's, the only surviving likenesses of the rulers of a state that the Chinese histories mention in a few lines. The survey calls them the royal portrait gallery of a lost empire. The other caves hold Buddhas and guardians in a style with Indian and Tibetan as well as Chinese hands, cut by the Bai people 白族, who still live in the villages below and whose temple fairs 庙会 on the mountain are on the page on shows.

The carving people talk about. Cave eight holds a carving of the female organ, venerated for fertility by the Bai for centuries and still, the survey records, the object of offerings by women hoping for children; it is unique in a Chinese Buddhist cave, and the site presents it without embarrassment. Visitors should treat it as the local people do, which is to say respectfully and without cameras.

How to visit. Two to three hours, no booking, a modest ticket; the mountain is a scenic area 景区 with a temple and a colony of monkeys, the road from Dali runs through Jianchuan's old town, which is on the old-town page, and the survey reports almost no tourists. Go in the late afternoon when the sandstone turns red.

Why it is here. Because the book of the cliffs is not only a Chinese book. Nanzhao took Buddhism from India and Tibet 西藏 as much as from the Tang, and its kings had themselves carved in their own likeness beside the Buddha, which no Chinese emperor before the Northern Wei 北魏 had dared and none after them did. It is the one chapter written in another language.

12PreeChina, and What It Is Not

What does PreeChina arrange at China's cave temples, and what are the rules?

• Caves are booked, guided and driven to, and the three are what we do. The reading is yours.
• The Silk Road book, in order. Kizil 克孜尔石窟 and Bezeklik 柏孜克里克石窟 from Kuqa 库车 and Turpan; Mogao 莫高窟 with the month-ahead reservation and Yulin Caves 榆林窟 the next day by car; Mati 马蹄寺石窟 and its telephone cave from Zhangye; Tiantishan 天梯山石窟 from Wuwei; Bingling 炳灵寺石窟 by boat from Lanzhou 兰州 and Maijishan 麦积山石窟 from Tianshui; then Xumishan 须弥山石窟 and Beishikusi 北石窟寺 for the completists, and the two imperial sites, Yungang 云冈石窟 and Longmen 龙门石窟, as the end of the road. Three weeks for all of it, a week for the Gansu 甘肃 heart, and the survey's Silk Road itinerary is the spine.
• The Sichuan 四川 book. Leshan 乐山 by cliff path and by boat, Anyue 安岳石刻 by car through the fields, Dazu 大足石刻's two hills in a day, and Shizhongshan 石钟山石窟 from Dali 大理 as a detour; five days.
• Two days from a city. Longmen from Luoyang 洛阳 with the White Horse Temple 白马寺 from the temples page; Yungang from Datong 大同 in Shanxi 山西 with the wooden buildings of the architecture page; Xiangtangshan 响堂山石窟 and Tianlongshan 天龙山石窟 as a pair for anyone chasing the missing heads.
• The rules that hold everywhere. No photographs inside a cave unless a sign says otherwise, and the sign almost never does. The guide carries the torch and opens the doors; stay with the group. Special caves cost extra and are worth it at Mogao, Yulin Caves and Mati. Walkways at Maijishan and the cliff stair at Leshan close in rain and ice. Mogao must be booked about a month ahead in season and turns away walk-ins; Mati's Jinta 金塔寺 cave is booked by telephone days ahead; Longmen, Yungang, Dazu, Leshan and Maijishan advise booking and can be walked into on a quiet weekday. We check every rule the week you go.
• What this page is not. It is not the temples page, which has the living monasteries and the faith; here the caves are art and history, and nobody prays in most of them. It is not the museums page, which has the site museums at Longmen, Yungang and Dazu and the Dunhuang 敦煌 academy's exhibitions in the cities. It is not the parks page, where Longmen, Leshan and Maijishan appear as places to spend a day outdoors. It is not the tombs page, which has the Han cliff tombs beside the Leshan Buddha. And it takes no view on any of the images: we tell you which century cut them, who paid, what was taken and where it is, and leave the rest to the wall.