The AMAZING 1500 year old Longmen Buddhist Grottoes near Luoyang, Henan Province, China

Hi guys, welcome back. Just got off the train, I'm now in Henan province. Took about an hour or so to get here from Xi'an and I'm going to take you to a really, really, really cool place today. It's a place dripping with history, a place I've been to a couple of times. It's called Longmen, Longmen Shoku, the Dragon's Gate Grottoes. Right, let's go and have a look. The Longmen Buddhist grottoes are carved into the mountains either side of the Yi River, just south of one of the great ancient capital cities of China, Luoyang. The whole cliff face is carved with these little nooks and crannies. Some of them still have statues in them and many of them don't. I assume they all did at one point. The Binyan Caves, there are three in total, are some of the earliest caves at Longmen and one of the first things you will come to when visiting. It gives you a good taste of what's to come as you move further down the cliffside. So they were the Binyan Caves and the first three largest caves that you come to. They were built in 505, 505 of the Common Era, which makes them pretty old, pre-Tang, makes them Northern Wei Dynasty, I believe. Quite special, and actually lots of colour left on them as well, which is very surprising because they're not really hidden from the elements at all here. The whole cliff face is covered with sculpture, holes, caverns and calligraphy, the majority of which was done during the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty is considered to be the peak of Buddhist art in China. So wherever you are here, there is a constant speaker system on a constant cycle, non-stop, telling you to not touch and deface the statues, which is understandable, that's important, but it's non-stop everywhere. Kind of takes something away from the ambiance of the place. Alright, we're just coming to the showstopper, the most famous part of Longmen. Just going up the stairs now. This cave is called Fengxian Cave, and it was famously built with the money from the Emperor Gao Zong and his wife Wu Zetian, who was a very famous person. I'll tell you about later. But it's all modern art. The Fengxian Temple is without doubt the main highlight at Longmen. Built by Tang Gao Zong and Wu Zetian in 672, it contains nine large figures, most of which remain in very good condition. The figures were painted once upon a time, and although the weather and passage of time has worn most of this away, there are still traces to be seen. The central Buddha is the largest at Longmen, and is considered a masterpiece of Tang Dynasty art. It is also believed to have been sculpted to resemble Wu Zetian, the then co-ruler of China. I hope this gives you an idea of the scale. The central Buddha is over 17 metres tall, and it's regarded as one of the most famous pieces of Tang Dynasty art, Buddhist art. It's stunning. This whole area, when you're standing in the middle, you do feel very dwarfed by it all. Great place. So it might be quite difficult to grasp the scale of this place on the camera, so I'll give you some numbers that might help you. Carved into the side of the mountain here, there are approximately, give or take, 100,000 carved Buddha statues. 100,000, at least. And they range in size from an inch tall, up to 17 metres, which is the largest one back at the Fengtian Cave. It's, you know, all of them carved into the side of this limestone, gazing out over the river here. And actually on the other side of the river, there are even more. Not quite as many as this side, but there's also more caves over there with more carvings. Spectacular. Amongst the hundreds of caves that are here, there are several that should be on your itinerary. The Wanfu Cave, or 10,000 Buddha Cave, actually contains around 15,000 carved images of Buddha. It dates from the Tang Dynasty, and like many of the grottoes, was a product of the Emperor Tang Gaozong and Wu Zetian. Another interesting cave is the Yaofan Cave, or the Medical Prescription Cave. 140 inscriptions were found here detailing remedies to various medical problems, some of which are apparently still used today in traditional Chinese medicine. So there are lots of famous Buddhist grottoes in China, especially in northern China. The four most famous are generally regarded as here, in Longmen. The Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, I visited a couple of months ago, actually. I'll link a video up here somewhere, or maybe here. And the Maijishan Grottoes in Gansu, which I also visited last year. And the other one is the Yungang Grottoes, I believe, near Datong in Shanxi Province. Haven't been there yet, it's the last one to tick off my list. This is the third time I've been here, though. I actually brought my parents here a few years ago. They also loved it, and they've always told me I should make a video about this place, because it is quite cool. I hope the video does it justice. So these Buddhist grottoes in China, why are they important? Well, a lot of reasons. I mean, they are regarded as, especially I'd say here, and also the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, they are regarded as some of the best examples of Chinese Buddhist art anywhere. Because there was so much money put into these places, all these caves and all the grottoes and the statues, they were all paid for by merchants, patrons, basically just wealthy people who wanted either good fortune, or, to be honest, just wanted their name on something. A lot of these here, this is why they're so famous, they were actually paid for by the emperors of the Tang Dynasty, in particular Emperor Gao Zong and his wife, the Empress Wu Zetian, who would later become an empress in her own right, ruler of China. All right, I'm just going to cross the bridge onto the other side of the river now. Basically, this river, it runs north to south, and on either side of the river is all the grottoes and the sculptures. Most of them are on this side that we'll just walk through. And hopefully, I can find a nice quiet place to sit down, have a cup of tea, and have a talk about what we've just been looking at. So, yep, across the river, the speaker system is still telling me not to touch the statues. I think right now I could probably recite it, what they're saying exactly, word for word, in both Chinese and English. I've heard it that many times. It's quite a sight, you know. It's like the oldest cave was 493, built 1,500 years ago, in limestone as well, and it's just gone through all the trials and tribulations that is history, Chinese history, and it's in remarkably good condition. So the grottoes here were built mostly in two dynasties of Chinese history. They began in the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the first grotto, the Guyang Grotto, I believe it was called, was built in 493, the year 493, the Common Era. And the majority that you see was actually built in the Tang Dynasty, the Great Tang Dynasty. And then after that, they kind of stopped building these things in China. There was a little bit more development later, but hardly anything. So the majority of it is from those years. You'll notice that a lot of the statues have their heads removed. There's a lot of reasons for this. Firstly, people are obviously going to naturally think cultural revolution, and there was definitely damage done here during the Cultural Revolution, unfortunately. But actually, a lot of the damage was done earlier, in the early 1900s, and also during World War II as well. A lot of Western art collectors came to China in the early 1900s, seeking their treasure to put in museums around the world, and a lot of things were just removed here, and either taken, some of them were paid for, cheaply, I suppose, and a lot of them were literally just stolen. When I say art collector, I use that term very lightly. They were basically thieves. They weren't actually art collectors at all. And also during World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army also quite famously destroyed a lot of this place as well. So it's been between those three things, art collectors, thieves, the World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army, and then the Cultural Revolution. This place has suffered quite a lot, which is a testament to its size, you know, the fact that there is still so much here. There's so much to see. There's so many things still left, which is great. But yeah, just think, next time you're in a museum, in one of the great cities of the world, in the British Museum in London, or the Louvre in Paris, or the Met in New York, for example, and you see some stone Buddha heads, yeah, consider where they came from. A lot of them will have come from right here behind me. Shocking, but true. So I've mentioned a person a few times now. The person I've mentioned is Wu Zetian. Very famous. She's probably one of the most famous figures in Chinese history. If you're Chinese, you definitely know who she is. If you're not, maybe not. So let me introduce her. Tang Taizong, who's achieved more than Wu Zetian. In the thousands of years that make Chinese history, she is the only female leader in the nation's entire timeline. Her story begins as a concubine to one of the most famous emperors in Chinese history, Tang Taizong. She later hooked up with his son, the next emperor, Tang Gaozong, and became his top consort. Tang Gaozong was often ill and is not considered a particularly strong leader. As a result, Wu Zetian took control and pretty much ruled the empire. They moved the imperial capital from Chang'an, now known as Xi'an, where I live, to the city of Luoyang, just north of Longmen. Following the death of the emperor, Wu Zetian continued as de facto ruler of China under the following two emperors, both of whom were her sons, and eventually she used the power she had accrued and began a whole new dynasty, the Zhou dynasty, which would last for 15 years between 690 and 705 before the Tang dynasty restoration. Her years as de facto ruler and then empress account for around 50 years, and those 50 years are regarded as a high point in imperial Chinese history. Longmen is a magical place, and although it tends to play second fiddle to the Mogao grottoes in Dunhuang, I find it difficult to compare the two, so probably best to visit both. I love it at Longmen. There are so many stories here, and I'm sure I'll be back again in the future. Alright guys, that's about it for this video. I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you soon for more China stuff and travel. Take care, stay safe, bye bye.