Walking the Wall

Shikong Dafo Temple – the grottoes are carved into the cliff in the background

From the first day of our trip, the influence of the Silk Road has been a constant – we’ve seen it in the pattern of settlement along the trade routes, the ethnic diversity of Gansu Province, and of course, the famous Buddhist cave temples at Dunhuang and Matisi.

Even now that we’re off the main branch of the Silk Road, it is still a presence. We’re currently in Ningxia, which has been designated a Hui Autonomous Region in recognition of the Hui Muslim minority, many of whom are descended from Central Asian and Middle Eastern traders who migrated to China 1000 years ago along the Silk Road. And for about a 50 kilometre stretch east of Zhongwei, we saw several small, probably ancient, Buddhist cave temples, though all but one were locked.

The exception was Shikong Dafo Temple, otherwise known as Shikong Grottoes. The cave temples themselves are about 1400 years old, but a modern temple (i.e. probably just a few hundred years old) encloses the most important caves. The grottoes sit directly below a fragment of the Great Wall that runs along the edge of a sandstone cliff.

One of the outer grottoes

Unlike Dunhuang or Matisi, the grottoes are not yet restored (there is an 11 million RMB project to develop the site underway). There are no souvenir stalls out front, no interpretive signs or tour guides. Nearly all of the painted murals have been destroyed, and most of the statues are broken.

The eyes of the statues look remarkably real

Despite this, the grottoes are moving, more so even than Dunhuang or Matisi in an odd way. Some of this is probably just the imagined but still genuinely felt sense of discovery that accompanies stumbling across something that hasn’t been gussied up for the tourist dollar.

Shikong’s artifacts haven’t been well-preserved, as in a museum or curated temple cave, and as a result its history hasn’t been frozen. It is possible to see, and feel, time’s passage in the crumbling ruins. Some of the statues seem almost to be mourning their own decay, and they appear all the more alive for it.

Despite being constantly exposed to the air, the colours are still quite vivid

That Shikong remains an active temple also contributes to the sense of living history. When we were there, one monk and his followers were chanting in a processional through the courtyards. Other monks scurried about the temple on their busy schedule of daily tasks.

Classes, scriptures, offerings, chants … all in a day’s work for a monk

Finally, the artifacts are not solely cultural treasures of the distant past, they are also contemporary objects of veneration. Small offerings and red ribbons decorate many of the relics. In the outdoor grottoes, which have been almost entirely stripped of their murals and artifacts, small icons have been placed on the shelves, and on one headless statue, someone has gently put a cap on the shoulders.

Note: The indoor (cave) photos in this post were taken without flash in order to prevent any damage to the artifacts, using a 70-300 mm zoom lense at 3200 ISO at 1/40 second shutter speed, the slowest we could manage without a tripod. As a result, the photos are somewhat grainy.