Yungang Grottoes

The Yungang Grottoes are excellent examples of rock-cut architecture. It is one of the three most famous ancient sculptural sites of China. They were built in the period between 460-525 AD during the Northern Wei Dynasty. The grottoes are an outstanding example of Chinese stone carvings from the 5th and 6th centuries. Altogether, the site is composed of 252 grottoes with more than 51,000 Buddha statues and statuettes. In 2001, the Grottoes named a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a "masterpiece of early Chinese Buddhist cave art... [and] ...represent the successful fusion of Buddhist religious symbolic art from south and central Asia with Chinese cultural traditions, starting in the 5th century CE under Imperial auspices."

Hengshan Hanging Temple (Xuankong si)

The Hanging Temple, also Hanging Monastery or Xuankong Temple, is a temple built into a cliff. Along with the Yungang Grottoes, the Hanging Temple is one of the main tourist attractions and historical sites in the Datong area. With the history of 1,500 years, the temple is notable not only for its location on a sheer precipice but also the only existing temple with the combination of three Chinese traditional religions: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The structure is kept in place with oak crossbeams fitted into holes chiseled into the cliffs. The primary support system hides inside the bedrock. The monastery sits in the small canyon basin. The body of the building hangs from the middle of the cliff under the prominent summit, protecting the temple from rain erosion and sunlight. Coupled with the repair of the dynasties, the color tattoo in the temple is relatively well preserved.