We are taking a two week China tour sponsored by the Buddhist magazine Tricycle. The theme of the tour is Discovering Zen Buddhism in China. Pictured here from the left are Jenny, our local tour guide in Dunhuang; Andy Ferguson, a Zen scholar and our tour leader; and Eric Lu, the logistics coordinator.
We have been looking forward to visiting Dunhuang and seeing the incredible painted caves. This is the outside of the caves that we visited. This façade was built in the 1960s to protect the some of the caves.
If you look at a map of China, you’ll see that Dunhuang is very far west. We flew 2,500 miles from Shanghai to get here. This was a well-traveled place during the time of the Silk Road, 200 B.C until the mid 1800s. We didn't visit these northern caves, but we did walk along the one mile stretch where the caves were created.
Because Dunhuang is located in the Gobi dessert, it’s very dry here. The dry air protected the paintings from decay, leaving the colors largely intact after 1,600 years, except for colors using iron that oxidized and turned black.
This is an apsara, which is like an angel. The blue is this painting is from ground lapis lazuli stones that were likely mined in Badakhshan, then bought to Dunhuang via the Silk Routes.
We loved that the temple caves we visited were completely covered in murals. (The Chinese don't allow any photography inside the caves, so we took photos of postcards and reproductions of the murals for the blog.)
There are 492 temple caves with sculptures and paintings. We were only able to visit 10 caves, as they have closed up most of them to protect them. The art is primarily Buddhist. We saw sculptures of Buddhas flanked by Boddhisattvas that had been carved of wood and then plastered and painted.
There are lots of different subjects in the paintings, such as scenes of sutras (Buddhist texts) and Jataka tales. These are two paintings of Xuan Zang, the Chinese monk who traveled to India and brought back the Buddhist texts.
The pattern of Buddhist monks "wallpaper" was repeated in several caves, and was often referred to as a "1,000 Buddha cave". Each is slightly different!
This is a reproduced ceiling mural in a museum. Around the outside are apsaras and in the center are three rabbits whose ears form a triangle. This rabbits image is seen around the Silk Routes and the originals in the Dunhuang caves are the oldest known. This image also appears in Christian religious art as a symbol of The Trinity, and it likely came from the Silk Road.
Dunhuang had a large monastic community for hundreds of years. This is the cave that stored as many as 50,000 manuscripts. The cave was sealed in the 11th century and rediscovered in 1900 (photo from Wikipedia). Some of the manuscripts were taken or purchased for very little money by western archeologists who wanted to study these invaluable artifacts. Today this is considered theft by the Chinese.
The town of Dunhuang has statues of apsaras and other motifs from the caves. Kristina is posing in front of one with wool hat, shawl and sweater because it was cold here!
Since this is a tour about Zen Buddhism, we are meditating together when possible. Our tour leaders arranged the use of a hall at a Pure Land Buddhist temple. Pictured here are the women on the tour who enjoyed an afternoon meditation together, led by Enkyo Roshi (third from the left).
We chuckled when reading some curious translations.
We also visited the Gobi dessert sand dunes. We wore orange shoe coverings to keep the sand out of our shoes. Pictured here with some of the folks on the tour, Pete and Kristina are fourth and fifth from the left.
After the climb to the top, it was fun to run down the dunes!
There were about a thousand camels out here that could be hired for rides up the dunes.
Behind Pete is an oasis. Because there was water here, people traveling the Silk Road sometimes settled in Dunhuang.
We stayed almost until sunset, enjoying how the light changed in the dessert.
We feel so fortunate to have seen the Buddhist caves and scenery of Dunhuang!
We have been looking forward to visiting Dunhuang and seeing the incredible painted caves. This is the outside of the caves that we visited. This façade was built in the 1960s to protect the some of the caves.
If you look at a map of China, you’ll see that Dunhuang is very far west. We flew 2,500 miles from Shanghai to get here. This was a well-traveled place during the time of the Silk Road, 200 B.C until the mid 1800s. We didn't visit these northern caves, but we did walk along the one mile stretch where the caves were created.
Because Dunhuang is located in the Gobi dessert, it’s very dry here. The dry air protected the paintings from decay, leaving the colors largely intact after 1,600 years, except for colors using iron that oxidized and turned black.
This is an apsara, which is like an angel. The blue is this painting is from ground lapis lazuli stones that were likely mined in Badakhshan, then bought to Dunhuang via the Silk Routes.
We loved that the temple caves we visited were completely covered in murals. (The Chinese don't allow any photography inside the caves, so we took photos of postcards and reproductions of the murals for the blog.)
There are 492 temple caves with sculptures and paintings. We were only able to visit 10 caves, as they have closed up most of them to protect them. The art is primarily Buddhist. We saw sculptures of Buddhas flanked by Boddhisattvas that had been carved of wood and then plastered and painted.
There are lots of different subjects in the paintings, such as scenes of sutras (Buddhist texts) and Jataka tales. These are two paintings of Xuan Zang, the Chinese monk who traveled to India and brought back the Buddhist texts.
The pattern of Buddhist monks "wallpaper" was repeated in several caves, and was often referred to as a "1,000 Buddha cave". Each is slightly different!
This is a reproduced ceiling mural in a museum. Around the outside are apsaras and in the center are three rabbits whose ears form a triangle. This rabbits image is seen around the Silk Routes and the originals in the Dunhuang caves are the oldest known. This image also appears in Christian religious art as a symbol of The Trinity, and it likely came from the Silk Road.
Dunhuang had a large monastic community for hundreds of years. This is the cave that stored as many as 50,000 manuscripts. The cave was sealed in the 11th century and rediscovered in 1900 (photo from Wikipedia). Some of the manuscripts were taken or purchased for very little money by western archeologists who wanted to study these invaluable artifacts. Today this is considered theft by the Chinese.
The town of Dunhuang has statues of apsaras and other motifs from the caves. Kristina is posing in front of one with wool hat, shawl and sweater because it was cold here!
Since this is a tour about Zen Buddhism, we are meditating together when possible. Our tour leaders arranged the use of a hall at a Pure Land Buddhist temple. Pictured here are the women on the tour who enjoyed an afternoon meditation together, led by Enkyo Roshi (third from the left).
We chuckled when reading some curious translations.
We also visited the Gobi dessert sand dunes. We wore orange shoe coverings to keep the sand out of our shoes. Pictured here with some of the folks on the tour, Pete and Kristina are fourth and fifth from the left.
After the climb to the top, it was fun to run down the dunes!
There were about a thousand camels out here that could be hired for rides up the dunes.
Behind Pete is an oasis. Because there was water here, people traveling the Silk Road sometimes settled in Dunhuang.
We stayed almost until sunset, enjoying how the light changed in the dessert.
We feel so fortunate to have seen the Buddhist caves and scenery of Dunhuang!
