The Mogao Caves is also called the Thousand-Buddha Caves

The Mogao Caves is also called the Thousand-Buddha Caves, and the caves are on the rock face of the Soughing Dunes, 25 kilometers to the southeast of the Donghuang City in Gansu Province in western China. The place is dry and with very little rainfall, and has abundant sunlight all year round. It also has the four distinctive seasons and high temperature differences between the day and night. The Mogao Grottoes is over 1,600 meters long from north to south and is five floors high, with the highest point at about 50 meters above ground. Currently, it has 492 caves, over 45,000 square meters of frescos, 2,415 colored statues and over 4,000 statues of Apsaras (gods). The Mogao Caves is large in scale and has extremely abundant content and a very long history. The caves, together with the Yungang Caves in Shanxi Province and the Longmen Caves in Henan Province are called the "three great treasure houses of grotto art" in China. Welcome to China, Chinatourguide.com is pleasure to provide service for your China tours, We also provide Thailand tour packages or Cambodia tour packages.

 
The fine execution and prominent placement of these figures within Cave 231 distinguish them from other images conventionally designated as secular donor images in Dunhuang art. Moreover, the quality and location of these figures indicate a key development in the integration of filial piety with Buddhist devotion at the Mogao site. Medieval Chinese authors frequently described filial piety as the antithesis of Buddhist goals of renouncing family ties. Such goals of renunciation were characterized at the time as Indian and foreign in contrast to the native Chinese concept of filial piety. The incorporation of these secular figures into Buddhist family caves, however, provides compelling evidence that the lines between filial piety and Buddhist devotion were not always as sharply drawn as medieval Chinese textual rhetoric might imply.

Many of the statues are similar, though they show the Buddah with different hand gestures (mudra). Each mudra represents things such as teaching, protecting, and meditating. They also represent one of six different reincarnations of Buddha as a human being. Followers also believe that he has also been reincarnated as animals such as a deer, monkey, birds, tigers, and elephants. These incarnations as an animal are called Jutaku tales, and are widely popular in this culture.

The Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple

The Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple was originally built during the rein of Emperor Quan Fengyou of Nanzhao Kingdom (824-859). The large pagoda, called Qianxun Pagoda (千寻塔), was first built into a 16-storey one with a height of 69.13 m; the smaller northern pagoda and the southern one were built both in octagonal with 10 storeys and a height of 42.19 m. It is said that the three pagodas was constructed for the reasons of advocating Buddhism as well as dominating riddled floods in the area (according to local Buddhism culture, Buddhist pagoda can dominate beasts who control natural things such as flood). After the completion of the three imposing pagodas, a grand Chongsheng Temple was constructed later; and for several expansions in later periods, the temple reached its heyday in Song Dynasty (970-1279). Welcome to China, Chinatourguide.com is pleasure to provide service for your China tours, We also provide Thailand tour packages or Cambodia tour packages.

 
The restored Chongsheng Temple has many "bests" among the temples in modern China. Its 4 kilometer-long axis is the longest of any temple axis in China; the Hall of the Great Hero of the temple, at 51. 7 meters wide and 26 meters high, is the largest Buddhist hall of its kind in China. It has the largest number of gilded Buddha images, based on "Zhang Shengwen Scroll Painting". The temple also has 500 statues from Kunming's Bamboo Temple. Its 599 Buddha images are all gilded bronze. The woodcarving on the walls of its Hall of the Great Hero, the "Zhang Shengwen Scroll Painting", is 117 meters long and 18 meters high, the largest one of its kind in the world. The pestle of Buddha's warrior attendant in this temple, which is 6 meters long and I meter in diameter, is the largest pestle in the world. Finally, the drum in its drum tower, which is 3.1meters in diameter, is the largest drum in Chinese Buddhist temples.

Built in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple has a long history over 1,800 years, made of brick and covered with white mud. It is regarded as a landmark in Dali, recording the development of Buddhism in this area; and it is also the largest and grandest building in the southern China. Together with Zhaozhou Bridge in Hebei Province and Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, the construction of the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple is one of the three curiosities of Chinese ancient architecture.