Longmen Grottoes

Listen first. The Yi River runs past you, wide and unhurried, and the sound of water carries off the cliffs. The limestone here is pale grey, warm where the sun hits it and cool in the shade. Look up at the rock face, and it seems full of small dark openings, like honeycomb. Every one of those openings was cut by hand. Inside many of them, a face is looking back at you.

This is Longmen, which means Dragon Gate. It sits just south of Luoyang, where two hills face each other across the river. To the west is Longmen Hill. To the east is Xiangshan, or Fragrant Hill. In older texts, the place was called Yique, the Gate of the Yi, because the two cliffs stand like a pair of gate towers. Travellers coming to the old capital passed straight through this gap.

The story of the carving begins at the end of the fifth century. The Northern Wei were a dynasty founded by the Xianbei, a people from the northern steppes. Around 493, Emperor Xiaowen moved the Wei capital south to Luoyang. He brought with him a strong commitment to Buddhism, and a tradition of cave carving already practised at Yungang, further north. At Longmen, that tradition found new stone, and new patrons.

The work did not stop with the Wei. It continued through several dynasties, and reached its peak under the Tang, in the seventh and eighth centuries. Emperors, empresses, monks, officials, and ordinary families paid for niches. Today the cliffs hold more than two thousand caves and niches, and roughly one hundred thousand statues. Some figures are taller than a house. Others are smaller than your thumb. In 2000, the site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Walk along the west bank, and you can follow the change in style with your own eyes. The early Northern Wei figures are slender and long. Their faces are narrow, their smiles are calm and slightly distant, and their robes fall in sharp, layered pleats. The later Tang figures are fuller and rounder. Their cheeks are soft, their bodies have weight, and they feel closer to the human world. Same stone, same river... but two very different ideas of what a holy figure should look like.

One of the oldest caves is Guyang Cave. Its walls are crowded with niches, and many niches carry carved inscriptions. These texts record who paid for the carving, and why. Often it was a prayer for a dead parent, or for a family's health. Here is the first surprise. For many Chinese visitors, Guyang is famous less for its Buddhas than for its writing. A celebrated group of inscriptions, known as the Longmen Twenty, became a model for calligraphers. Their square, chiselled characters still shape how people practise brush writing today.

Nearby are the three Binyang Caves. The central one was commissioned by the Northern Wei court as an offering for the imperial parents, and it took many years to complete. Inside, a large seated Buddha sits with attendant figures, under a ceiling carved with a lotus and flying celestial beings. The walls once held two great reliefs of imperial processions, showing the emperor and the empress with their attendants.

Those reliefs are no longer here. In the 1930s, they were cut from the wall and sold abroad. Today, the emperor's procession is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the empress's procession is in the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. As you walk, you will notice something else. Many statues here have no heads. Some damage came from time and weather. Much of it came from looting in the early twentieth century, when carved heads were removed for the art market.

Now, the centre of Longmen. Climb the stairs to Fengxian Temple, and the cliff opens into a wide, roofless terrace. Here sits the great Vairocana Buddha, the cosmic Buddha of light, with disciples, bodhisattvas, and guardian kings on either side. The main figure is about seventeen metres tall, including its base. Its ears alone are taller than most adults. The group was completed in the 670s, during the reign of Emperor Gaozong.

An inscription at the site records that Empress Wu Zetian, Gaozong's consort and later China's only female emperor, donated money for the work from her own allowance. That part is documented. There is also a popular story that the Buddha's face was modelled on Wu Zetian herself. That is a legend, not a recorded fact. But stand in front of the face, and you can see why the story survives. The eyes are lowered, the mouth is gentle, and the expression is calm and confident at the same time.

The second surprise is easy to miss. Look for the Medical Prescription Cave. Around its entrance, carvers cut practical remedies into the stone, treatments for illnesses of the time. It is a medical text in limestone, placed where many travellers would pass. Not far away is the Ten Thousand Buddhas Cave, from the Tang period. Its walls are covered with rows of tiny seated Buddhas, so many that the walls look textured, like woven cloth. Look closely in the Lotus Cave too, where a large lotus flower opens across the ceiling.

When you have walked the west bank, cross the bridge to Xiangshan on the east. The east side has fewer large caves, but it gives you the best view. From here, the whole western cliff stretches out across the water, with Fengxian Temple in the middle. On this hill is also the tomb of Bai Juyi, one of the great poets of the Tang dynasty. He spent his last years near Luoyang, and he chose to be buried here, looking across at the Buddhas.

So before you leave, find a quiet place on the riverbank. Watch the light move across the cliff. In the morning, the west face catches the sun, and the carvings stand out sharply. Later, shadow fills the niches, and the faces become harder to read. Think of the hands that held the chisels, more than a thousand years ago... and the families who paid for one small niche, hoping a prayer would last as long as the stone. Look up once more. Some of those prayers are still here.