The Buddhist statues and caves in the grotto were all carved out of the rock of the hills. The larger caves took up to 30 years to complete, and the monks had to apprentice for up to 7-8 years before they were qualified to do this work. The caves were sponsored by various individuals, the size and complexity relative to the amount the individuals were able to sponsor. The largest Buddha is over 7 meters tall (the ears are each 1.9 m long) and the smallest only 2 cm. The "10 thousand Buddha cave" actually contains statues of 15,000 Buddhas.
Here is my tour guide Lily (a.k.a. 董丽媛 - dong li yuan). She went to university in Xi'An and has been working as a guide for about 5 years.
Of course the most popular exhibit in he place was me. About 15-20 people asked to take their picture with me, and a few others took my pic on the sly. Here is a young girl from Inner Mongolia, I never got her name. She is studying in Xi'An but taking a break to do some travelling. She is visiting Luoyang for the Peony festival, as the Peony is the national flower of Mongolia. We wandered around and chatted for about 20 minutes, I think she was excited to practice her English.
She told me that Inner Mongolia is so flat you can drive with your eyes closed and not hit anything. I said we have parts of Canada like that!
No comments:
Post a Comment