Episode Details

When night fell and the lights turned on, the statue of Lushena Buddha, originally built in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) as part of the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, Henan province, seemed draped in a golden cassock.

Against the backdrop of the night sky, the statue, whose name is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit word "vairocana", meaning "illuminator", looked more solemn and serene, inspiring awe for the ancient piety and artistry that brought it to life.

The night tour around Longmen, an artistic trove comprising more than 2,300 caves and niches carved into steep limestone cliffs over a one-kilometer-long stretch mainly from the fifth to the 10th centuries, gained popularity this summer.

Since July, the site has received an average of 5,000 to 6,000 visits daily from 5 pm to 9 pm, with peak days exceeding 10,000, according to Yu Jie, Party secretary of the Longmen Grottoes Academy.

President Xi Jinping's continuous attention to cave temples has significantly contributed to this popularity. Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, has visited all four major cave temples in China and made many instructions about their significance and conservation since 2019.

The four grottoes are all treasures of Chinese civilization with significant historical and cultural value, Xi said when he visited the Maijishan Grottoes in Tianshui, Gansu province, on Sept 11 last year.

Besides Longmen and Maijishan, the four sites also include the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu, and the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi province, all UNESCO World Heritage sites. They are outstanding examples of Chinese grotto temples, an important Buddhist art form that was introduced to China via the ancient Silk Road during the third century.

In August 2019, Xi arrived in Gansu for an inspection and made the first stop at Dunhuang. Touring the Mogao Caves, he checked the work of cultural relics protection and research, and emphasized the need to preserve the finer features of the nation's culture.

The Mogao Caves site, at the religious and cultural crossroads on the ancient Silk Road, boasts more than 700 Buddhist caves featuring exquisite murals and statues from the fourth to the 14th centuries.

Xi also met Fan Jinshi, honorary director of the Dunhuang Academy, who was born in Beijing and raised in Shanghai, but chose to work in Dunhuang, a remote and arid desert region in Northwest China, for six decades. Xi highlighted the "Mogao spirit", forged by heritage protectors such as Fan, which values insistence, contribution, a sense of responsibility and pioneering.

Change in approach

Experts noted that cave temples, often located in remote mountainous areas and exposed to the natural environment, are difficult to protect and manage, as they frequently face threats such as water damage, earthquakes, unstable rock foundations and weathering, as well as human-induced damage.

"Despite the difficulties, China's efforts to protect its cave temples have endured for eight decades," said Su Bomin, director of the Dunhuang Academy. "We have continuously explored technologies and accumulated experience in restoring the Mogao Caves, developing a comprehensive set of programs that have been applied not only in domestic grottoes but also to sites overseas."

Su said that the approach to protecting China's cave temples is currently experiencing a leap from a "rescue restoration" mindset to one focused on "preventive protection".

Hang Kan, director of the Yungang Research Institute, said that in recent years, professionals have intensified their efforts in the digital collection of information from the caves of the Yungang Grottoes, striving to "seize the information at the mo