Longmen Grottoes

Here is some information on the Longmen Grottoes before I begin my review of this area. The Longmen Grottoes are located near Luoyang and are a large collection of ancient Buddhist cave art. The grottos were carved during the Northern Wei Dynasty, when the rulers relocated their capital at Luoyang near the end of the 5th century. At that time Buddhism was spreading east into China and was venerated by the imperial court. The Buddhists adopted the practice of carving rock temples, dedicated to the Buddha. This construction began 493 during the reign of Emperor Xiaowen and continued for a span of over 400 years. There are 2345 caves and niches, 2800 inscriptions, 43 pagodas and over 100,000 Buddhist images along the 1-km-long cliff of Mt. Longmen on the west and Mt. Xiangshan on the east of the Yihe River south of Luoyang. The most impressive area are the stone statues in Fengxian Cave, carved under the edict of Empress Wuzetian (reigned 690-705). These are composed of a 17.14-meter-high statue of Vairocana Buddha, and a series of pairs of Bodhisattvas, heavenly kings, protectors and worshippers. The huge statue of Vairocana Buddha is today praised as being the quintessence of Buddhist sculpture in China.

The sheer magnitude of these caves was remarkable. Unfortunately, the majority of the sculptures have been damaged to some degree and/or defaced. As we walked along and looked into the huge number of small caves all along the grotto, you could see many of the statutes had the heads removed or the heads were damaged to the point that you could not make out anything more than it was a head at one time. Also missing in the majority of the sculptures were the hands/fingers which meant you could not make out the hand gestures (which illustrated what the Buddha was trying to convey). In my readings on this area I found out that this damage was done during the Opium Wars and the Eight-Nation Alliance (Boxer rebellion) but I have to admit to a little skepticism to exactly what caused the damage to these carvings. I don’t know if I fully accept that all of this damage was done during these times (around 1900) because the damage seems a lot like what would happen during the CR. Perhaps the information is correct but perhaps not; there really isn’t any way to know for sure.

As we continued to look into the caves (some big and some small, as you might notice in the photos) and see the same type of damage in each you felt a sense of frustration about what had been done. At the time of completion of these caves, it must have been an awesome sight to behold all of these carvings. Unfortunately, we will never know what it was but you can imagine what must have been when this area was complete. There were stairs everywhere to allow you to go up into the next level of carvings/caves. There were very few signs in English to explain where we were or what section of the grottoes we were in. There is a lot in the information about the caves and I had a different idea of what the caves were but it turns out the caves were all of the “nooks and crannies” in the sides of the cliffs where the drawings and sculptures were located. It was just cave after cave after cave, and then on to the next level which had yet more caves. Some of the sculptures were very small but they still contained a lot of detail. You could never get too close to the images because they were blocked off with fencing to keep people out. The 17.1 meter Buddha statue area was by far the most impressive but again, the damage done took something away from the work. After this area of the grottoes, it was time to turn around and head back to the buses. Now this was odd to us (Steve and I). The Chinese took very little time to look around and try to imagine what this area must’ve looked like, they moved to get photos and kept on moving. It was more about getting the photo that trying to absorb what they were looking at. There were still grottos on the other side of the river but we didn’t have the time to go over and look. This is just so different than how we vacation. We try to see as much as we can but we also take our time to view and enjoy what we are seeing. In the case of this outing, we had a schedule to keep and we were going to keep that schedule.

For us, when we take a trip/vacation, we plan on downtime and keep only a rough schedule of what we want to do. But, that’s when we travel on our own. When you travel in a large group, it’s a different story. You have a schedule set and you follow it since no one person is more important than the group. We asked many of our colleagues what they thought of this area. The typical answer, it was old and that was it. They enjoyed the Shaolin Temple much, much more. Perhaps they are accustomed to things that are extremely old due to the long history of China so stuff like this doesn’t interest them much. It’s the same in Suzhou, I’ve asked them if they’ve been to Tiger Hill and most will say “No. There isn’t much to do there.” The historical/cultural significance is lost on them but again, perhaps they are immune. Maybe they hear so many stories from their parents that it loses some meaning. (Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back in the days of the Ming dynasty, blah, blah, blah).

So, it’s back on the bus to head into town to eat and get to the hotel for the night. We descended on the restaurant just like we did for lunch (like the Alfred Hitchcock birds on a small child). The food was good, nothing really special but it was hot and edible (two positive things). Basically the same menu as lunch, bread, rice, a couple of vegetable dishes, a toufu dish and some meat dishes to fill your tummy. What I found interesting was that on the way to the food, we saw a bust on the side of the road that looked familiar. It was Ben Franklin (or Ben Franklim as it was spelled on the image), why…I don’t know but it was interesting to find in Luoyang, China.

We stayed at the F-Comfort Inn (not a place you would stay in the US, think about it). It wasn’t a 5 star place, perhaps 2 stars but it had a bed and shower so it was a step above the train lodgings. It was about 8:30pm when we crashed, we had been up since 5:30am after a night with little sleep with a lot of walking and bus rides so we were happy to be able to get a good night’s rest. The hotel had a “free” breakfast buffet so we planned on getting up plenty early so we could claw and scratch our way into this small breakfast nook to get something to eat before our long bus ride to the next stop on our tour of this portion of Henan province.

On a side note, on the dresser were two bottles of water, a bottle of OJ and a bottle of green tea. Steve and I took these and drank them since we couldn’t drink the water from the sink (obviously). We found out the following morning that these weren’t free. They made a big deal that someone took the water and stuff. Of course they were saying this in Chinese and talking to our group about the situation. When I asked what the problem was it was like someone had stolen these items from the room. When I told them that Steve and I took these things, the kids thought it was funny. They said “these weren’t free”, to which I replied, “how would we know that since nothing was in English?” I told them that in the US, things like this are free in US hotels otherwise, they wouldn’t be there out in the open. If things aren’t free, it’s posted and typically they have a mini bar to hold them making it obvious that something wasn’t free. So we had to pay all of 14 RMB to rectify the situation. It was somewhat comical to us; they were making this big fuss over 14 RMB! Whatever! Since it was the Foreigners that created the problem, the furor died down quickly once we gave the money to the tour guide to resolve the problem. Day #1 completed, Day #2 coming soon.