Newman Huo
TIANSHUI, an important city on the ancient Silk Road in Gansu Province, is famous for three things: pretty girls, the Fuxi Temple, and the Maijishan Grottoes.
When my friends and I arrived at Tianshui on the evening of Sept. 21, we saw neither pretty girls nor the Fuxi Temple in the city. Our sole purpose was to see the Maijishan Grottoes, which is located 45 kilometers southeast of the city.
Historically, Tianshui used to be the first stop on the Silk Road in Gansu Province for travelers and merchants going to various parts of northwestern China and beyond.
The city is also regarded as the birthplace of the legendary Chinese emperor Fuxi. Even today, many devotees still flock to the Fuxi Temple, which was built in the western part of the city during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
Because of sufficient rainfall and green woods in the city, Tianshui’s landscape is quite different from the generally dry and barren regions in northwestern China.
Young girls in Tianshui look much prettier because of their fair skin compared to girls in other parts of northwestern China whose skin is usually dark because of the strong sunlight.
The next day, after we ate lunch in Tianshui, we took a minibus to the Maijishan Grottoes.
Our guide was a pretty woman surnamed Li in her early 20s, who worked for a tourist agency in Tianshui. Because Li had worked as a trainee guide for one year in the Maijishan Grottoes, she knew the grottoes quite well.
The Maijishan Grottoes are among the most famous Buddhist grottoes in China, along with the Mogao Grottoes in Gansu Province, the Longmen Grottoes in Henan Province, and Yungang Grottoes in Shanxi Province.
The area around Maijishan Mountain is one of the most beautiful in Gansu Province because of its stunning natural and impressive man-made scenery.
The Maijishan Grottoes, located on the northern side of the Qinling Mountain Range and at a height of 1,742 meters, gets its name from the giant, haystack-like shape of Maijishan Mountain.
Today, the mountain has 7,800 Buddhist statues in 194 caves spreading over more than 1,000 square meters and dating back to between the fifth and 18th centuries.
“Because of its significant place in the history of Chinese sculpture, the Maijishan Grottoes are considered the ‘Oriental Museum of Buddhist Sculpture’ by experts in China and abroad,” Li said.
After about half an hour’s drive on the plains outside Tianshui, our bus approached the mountainous area of the Maijishan Grottoes.
As I looked out of the bus window, I could see the hills everywhere were covered by green woods, which can hardly be seen in other parts of the ancient Silk Road.
“Maijishan is exactly located on the boundary of the Yangtze River and Yellow River regions, so the ecological environment here is quite similar to that in South China,” Li said.
Ten minutes later, our bus stopped at a parking lot in front of a newly built gate to the Maijishan Grottoes. The admission ticket cost us 50 yuan (US$6.17) per person.
After going through the gate, our guide told us to get into a battery-operated car which cost an extra 10 yuan per person.
“You can also choose to walk to the scenic zone, and it will talk you about 20 minutes to get there,” Li said.
Li told us tourist buses could eralier directly enter the area, but after the gate was completed, no buses were allowed in to protect the environment.
It took us about five minutes in the battery-operated car to get to the Maijishan Grottoes.
Standing at the foot of Maijishan Mountain, I came to see the true face of the Maijishan Grottoes, which look like a mammoth beehive of temple caves gouged right into a perpendicular cliff.
In the chambers of a gargantuan beehive, the most prominent sculpture is a 16-meter-tall Buddha with two accompanying Bodhisattvas, which were carved high up on the mountain.
The mountain, studded with caves and strapped by many winding walkways and spiral stairs, rises majestically from the surrounding heavily wooded slopes.
There is an ancient Buddhist temple, called “Ruiying Temple,” at the foot of Maijishan Mountain, but when we went, it was closed as it was undergoing renovation.
As we began to climb up the mountain, we found the grottoes were divided into two sections, western and eastern, since the central section was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake in the eighth century.
Construction on the Maijishan Grottoes began in the late Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.), and continued until the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
The Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534) was a time of great prosperity, and during that period Buddhism began to prevail as a cultural force in China.
Subsequent dynasties added to and sometimes rebuilt the caves according to the styles of the era.
The main feature of the statues in Maijishan Grottoes is their trend toward secularization, in which the icons are depicted as humans rather than gods.
Except for statues built in the early period, almost all Buddhist statues look affable and accessible. They are not gods standing high in the heaven, but rather more like common people.
Typically, statures from the Northern Wei Dynasty are characterized by slim figures, and the Sui and Tang dynasties (581-907) plumper ones.
The only problem with the grottoes is that they are all locked up. This meant we had to view them from outside with the limited lighting the barred entrance afforded.
We finished our tour in two hours.
