Newman Huo
ALTHOUGH the Yulin Grottoes in Gansu Province do not usually feature on the itineraries of modern-day tourists, they are worth a visit for people who love medieval Chinese art.
I visited the grottoes Sept. 19, along with a 10-member research team from Shenzhen’s Guan Shanyue Art Museum.
The Yulin Grottoes are an integral part of the Dunhuang Grottoes, which also include the Mogao Grottoes, the West Thousand-Buddha Grottoes and the East Thousand-Buddha Grottoes.
The Yulin Grottoes, also called “Ten-Thousand-Buddha Gorge,” are situated in a valley along the Yulin River, about 75 kilometers south of Anxi County and 180 kilometers from the Mogao Grottoes.
The grottoes were first carved on sandstone cliffs on both banks of the Yulin River during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534).
The extant 42 grottoes, with 30 on the east cliff and 12 on the west cliff, contain 5,650 square meters of murals and 272 painted sculptures.
The existing murals, built at the same time as the Mogao Grottoes, span a period of more than 700 years, from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) to the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368).
The murals are closely related to the Mogao Grottoes in terms of contents, yet they possess an artistic style of their own.
In particular, the exquisite murals from the Western Xia Dynasty (1036-1227) in the Yulin Grottoes are considered by experts to have made up for some shortcomings in the Mogao Grottoes.
During our three-hour stay at the Yulin Grottoes, we visited a total of nine caves, including the 2nd, 3rd and 25th caves, which have been listed as “special caves,” because not only are they well-preserved, but also best represent the artistic achievements of the Dunhuang Grottoes.
Tourists can visit the special caves by paying an entry fee of 100 to 200 yuan (US$13-26) for each cave, on top of the 45 yuan admission fee.
When our team left Dunhuang in a bus around 9 a.m. Sept. 19, we planned to arrive at Yulin Grottoes in about two hours’ time. However, it was not to be.
Our driver tried to take a shortcut on the Dunhung-Anxi highway, but found the road was closed as it was still under construction.
We finally got to our destination at around 1 p.m.
Once we got down from the bus, we found ourselves standing on the edge of a cliff. Below was the Yulin Grottoes valley, through which the Yulin River winds its way from south to north.
Along both banks of the river grow elm trees. The greenery of the valley strongly contrasts with the barren deserts all around. The valley must have housed the artisans more than 1500 years ago who hewed the first cave out of the cliff.
Walking down a few steps, we came to a lane at the bottom of the east cliff. The lane took us to the Yulin Grottoes Relics Preservation Institute, where its director Yin Ying was waiting.
According to Yin, there were only about 10,000 visitors to the Yulin Grottoes last year, while 550,000 visited the Mogao Grottoes.
This may explain why Yulin Grottoes looks so quiet and tranquil, compared to the busy Mogao Grottoes.
Li Xia, a young woman who has worked in the area for eight years, served as our tour guide.
The first cave we entered was the 11th cave, where we saw 18 lifelike sculptures of arhats or Buddhist sages, who had fully realized the Buddhist doctrine, and attained freedom from the cycle of suffering and rebirth.
Li told us these sculptures, made during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), were not originally placed in the cave but moved there from other caves later.
Next, we visited the 15th cave, which was built during the Mid-Tang Dynasty and rebuilt during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). On the ceiling of an ante-room to the cave, we saw the best image of flying apsaras in the Dunhuang Grottoes.
The apsaras were drawn with strokes in the expressionist style of Wu Daozi, one of the most famous painters from the Tang Dynasty.
In the 16th and 19th caves which were built during the Five Dynasties period (907-960), we saw well preserved paintings belonging to the Cao family who once ruled the Dunhuang region from 914 to 1036, and had many grottoes built.
The 25th cave, built during the Mid-Tang Dynasty, was the only one in the Yulin Grottoes that has remained intact until today. While depicting the blissful realm of the Western Pure Land, the mural “Illustration of Amitayurdhyana Sutra” on the south wall reproduces the royal life and architecture in Chang’an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty.
Today, a reproduction of the mural has been installed in the Gansu Hall of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
The mural “Illustration of Maitreya Sutra” on the north wall contains a series of paintings, which vividly reproduce farming scenes from the Tang Dynasty.
According to our guide Li, the tools shown in the paintings, such as the ploughshare, sickle, and hayfork, are still widely used in Gansu today.
The 2nd and 3rd caves, well preserved, date back to the Western Xia Dynasty. The 2nd cave is famous for the two murals of the Water-Moon Avalokiteshvaras on the west wall.
What was really intriguing about the painting on the northern section of the west wall was the depiction of the Buddhist monk Xuan Zang of the Tang Dynasty and his well-known disciple, the Monkey King (Sun Wukong in Chinese), on their journey to India.
Experts believe the appearance of Sun Wukong with a monkey-like face in the mural was more than 300 years before the novel, “Xi You Ji,” by Wu Cheng’en of the Ming Dynasty.
The depiction of Xuan Zang and Sun Wukong on their way back from India can also be found in another mural in the 3rd cave.
The largest cave in the Yulin Grottoes, the 6th cave houses a 24.7-meter-tall Buddha statute, which is the third largest in the area. The gilt sculpture was built during the early Tang Dynasty and renovated during the Qing Dynasty.
