In my effort to visit the four major (World Heritage) Buddhist grottoes in China, our first adventure in the Chongqing vicinity, on Christmas Day, was a day trip to Dazu Grottoes in the western part of the municipality. Several sites make up this UNESCO listing, but a few stand out as the must-see destinations. Since we had limited daylight and time with our driver, we could only make it to three, but I am definitely interested in returning to see the others.
We went to Baodingshan, Beishan, and Nanshan in that order. That’s pretty much the only thing I would change about that day. I would have started with Nanshan. You’ll understand why as I describe each site.
Nanshan
On the south side of the city of Dazu is South Mountain or Nanshan. It has wide-sweeping views of the fast-growing city where skyscrapers are popping up like bamboo shoots. And near the crest of the hill is a small collection of ancient carved stone art. By small, I mean only a few pieces. I don’t know if that is originally how many there were or if some were damaged and removed over time, but this small collection has one highlight that makes it worth visiting. That is the good-sized Taoist grotto with hundreds of figures carved on the walls and main column depicting the Taoist trinity and four emperors. It is an excellent and rare piece of ancient Taoist grotto art.
Beishan
On the opposite side of the small city is North Mountain or Beishan. Its collection of ancient rock art is much larger than Nanshan’s and is almost exclusively Buddhist as must grottoes are. However, unlike a lot of grottoes I’ve seen this one has hundreds of small caves that are intricately carved on top of each other. It sounds a lot like the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, but it is very different. Those at Beishan feel more intimate and detailed.
There are also sections of this site where you can be immersed or surrounded by the art while not being in one individual cave. For me these were also the most detailed I’ve experienced. Some of the carvings were so full of imagery you could easily be engrossed for a very long time looking at all the figures, the buildings, the symbols, and other intricacies not incorporated in most grotto art that seems to focus on images of people or gods.
After leaving the small paid area of this site, we took a jaunt up a neighboring hilltop where we saw a tall white pagoda beckoning. We didn’t know it would lead to one of the highlights of our day trip when we found the two giant Buddhas carved into the cliff side below the pagoda. There was an incense alter in front of them with sweet scented smoke drifting up into the trees while their autumn leaves blew and twirled down. The scale of these two statues, though not the biggest, is magnificent, especially with the tower on top.
So, that’s Dazu Grottoes – Beishan and Nanshan. More about the third site we visited, Baodingshan, in the following post.
