Longmen Grottoes

Prologue: Ten Thousand Gazes by the Yi River

At dusk, the Yi River draws out the long reflection of Longmen Mountain.

On the cliff face, a hundred thousand Buddha images gaze down at the water. They have sat here for fifteen hundred years — carved under the Northern Wei, under the High Tang, by emperors, by craftsmen. No one can say who first pressed a chisel to the rock; all anyone knows is that once the first blow had fallen, the stone began to house the Buddha.

493 CE: The First Chisel After the Move

In 493 CE, Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei moved his capital to Luoyang.

This emperor of sinicisation ordered grottoes to be opened on Longmen Mountain, on both banks of the Yi River — Guyang Cave is among the earliest to survive. The Binyang Caves and the Lotus Cave followed one after another; the figures in the niches are slender and elegant, their robes loose and flowing, falling like ink-wash — the artistic projection of the Northern Wei’s sinicisation reforms. A dynasty laid aside its steppe garb and carved its rites and ideals into the cliff.

Twenty Years at Binyang

The Northern Wei’s chisels rang on for decades.

The Binyang Caves took more than twenty years to complete and stand as the great synthesis of Northern Wei grotto art. What one generation of craftsmen could not finish, the next carried on — on the cliff of Longmen, no blow was ever struck in haste.

The Smile of Vairocana

The peak of Longmen came in the Tang dynasty.

In 672 CE, Wu Zetian donated “20,000 strings of her cosmetics allowance” for the building of the Fengxian Temple; four years later the principal image was completed — the Great Vairocana Buddha, 17.14 metres tall, dignified and compassionate of face, with a faint smile at the corners of the mouth, called by researchers “the most beautiful smile in the East.” Around it, more than 1,200 Tang niches — the Ten Thousand Buddha Cave, the Qianxi Temple and many more — were opened in succession, making Longmen the great synthesis of Tang Buddhist art.

The imperial grandeur of Luoyang and the solemnity of the Buddhist realm flow together on one cliff face.

A Thousand Years of Water and Fire

For fifteen hundred years the Yi River has risen and fallen; dynasties have risen and fallen with it.

In the 20th century, the sound of thieves’ chisels rang through the cliff once more, and some figures were damaged. Yet the great Buddha of the Fengxian Temple, through all vicissitudes, still smiles. It has seen the splendour of imperial patronage and the shadows of looters — and never changed the curve of its lips.

2000: From Luoyang to the World

In 2000, the Longmen Grottoes were inscribed on the World Heritage List under criteria (i), (ii) and (iii), ranking with the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang and the Yungang Grottoes as China’s three great grotto sites.

Today, the Longmen Grottoes preserve 2,345 niches and more than one hundred thousand statues. Visitors walk along the Yi River and look up to meet the gaze on the cliff — and perhaps that craftsman of fifteen hundred years ago, if he were here, would look up too, to see the Buddhas he had carved.

Epilogue: The Smile Remains

At dusk, the Yi River still draws out the long reflection of Longmen.

A hundred thousand Buddhas still gaze at the water, and Vairocana still smiles. Stone cannot speak, but it remembers the force of every blow, the wish of every dynasty — and the gaze of every generation that has looked up.

Outstanding Universal Value (OUV)

• Criterion (i): Images such as the Vairocana Buddha represent the pinnacle of Chinese Buddhist stone sculpture.
• Criterion (ii): Longmen fuses the artistic traditions of the Central Plains and the Western Regions, influencing Buddhist statuary across East Asia.
• Criterion (iii): As the great centre of imperial image-making from the Northern Wei to the Tang, it is a unique testimony to the rise and fall of Buddhism in China.

Facts at a Glance

• 2,345 niches and more than 100,000 statues survive
• The Vairocana Buddha of the Fengxian Temple is 17.14 m tall; inscribed in 2000