Datong, Shanxi, China
云冈石窟群 · Yúngāng Shíkū
The caves themselves: forty-five main caves along a kilometre of sandstone cliff, cut between 460 and the 520s by the Northern Wei. Walk them from east to west and you walk through seventy years in which Buddhist sculpture came from India and Central Asia and became Chinese.
Photo: Thebrainchamber1, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
The Northern Wei (386–534) were the Tuoba, a people from the northern steppe who conquered northern China and made Pingcheng, today's Datong, their capital. In 460 the emperor Wencheng let the monk Tanyao cut five great caves, each with a colossal Buddha. For the next thirty-four years the court and its nobles paid for ever richer caves. When the capital moved to Luoyang in 494, smaller patrons went on cutting small caves to the west until the 520s.
About 51,000 figures survive in some 250 caves and niches. The early Buddhas have broad shoulders and thin robes like those of Gandhara and Mathura; the later ones wear the layered robes of Chinese officials and have long, slender bodies. You can watch the change happen as you walk.
Part of Yungang Grottoes. Also there: Lingyan Temple (Yungang).
One ticket covers all the caves, the museum and the Lingyan Temple. Some caves are closed at times for conservation.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| Eastern caves 1–4 | Yungang ticket |
| Central caves 5–13 | Yungang ticket |
| Tanyao's five caves 16–20 | Yungang ticket |
| Western caves 21–45 | Yungang ticket |
| Yungang Grottoes Museum | Yungang ticket |
The front of this cave fell away long ago, and its Buddha, about thirteen and a half metres high, now sits in the open. His shoulders are broad, his robe clings, his face is full and smiling slightly, with a small moustache. He is the face of Yungang.
Now walk a few steps east to Cave 16. Its Buddha, finished later, wears a thick Chinese robe with a sash tied at the chest. In a few metres, Indian Buddhism has put on Chinese clothes.
"The caves were always bare stone." Most were painted, and many had wooden temple halls built against the cliff. The bright colours you see in Caves 9–13 are mostly Qing repainting.
"Every head is original." Many heads and figures were cut off and sold abroad in the 1910s and 1920s. Some are in museums in New York, Paris and Tokyo.
We searched Chinese sources first for this list, then English ones.
Walk from east to west, Caves 1 to 45. Three hours for the main caves; the Yungang museum by the exit is worth an hour more.
The two eastern caves each have a square pillar carved as a pagoda in the middle, for walking round in prayer.
The largest cave at Yungang, never finished by the Northern Wei. Inside sit a Buddha and two bodhisattvas carved much later, perhaps in the Sui (581–618) or early Tang (618–907), rounder and softer than anything around them.
Wooden towers of 1651 stand against the cliff. In Cave 5 sits Yungang's largest Buddha, about seventeen metres high. Cave 6 has a two-storey central pillar and walls carved with the life of the Buddha, from his birth to his enlightenment, in Chinese dress and Chinese buildings.
Pairs of caves, cut together, perhaps for the emperor and the empress dowager, who ruled together in the 470s and 480s. Look up at the ceiling of Cave 7: flying figures circle a lotus.
These caves have front halls with columns carved in the rock, and their walls are crowded with painted figures, buildings and musicians. The colours are mostly Qing. Cave 12 is the music cave: find the players of the lute, the pipes, the drum and the harp.
The first and greatest caves, each built round one colossal Buddha. Cave 19 has the tallest of the five, almost seventeen metres. Cave 18's Buddha wears a robe covered in a thousand tiny Buddhas. Cave 17 has a seated Maitreya with crossed ankles.
After 494 smaller patrons cut small caves at the west end. The figures are slender, with long necks and narrow faces, the style later carried to Longmen. Many have weathered badly.
In the early twentieth century dealers had heads and small figures cut from the caves. A bodhisattva head in the Metropolitan Museum in New York and a seated bodhisattva in the Musée Cernuschi in Paris are among those traced to Yungang. Compare them with the empty places in the walls.
For decades lorries of coal from the mines around Datong passed 350 metres from the caves, and black dust settled on the stone. In 1998 the road was moved behind the hill. In the 2000s the factories and villages in front were cleared, and in 2001 Yungang was listed as World Heritage. In 2021 the Yungang Academy was set up to look after the caves.
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 460 | Tanyao begins the five caves | The Western Roman Empire has sixteen years left |
| 494 | The court moves to Luoyang | Clovis rules the Franks |
| 1651 | Wooden towers are built in front of Caves 5 and 6 | The English Navigation Act |
| 1907 | Chavannes photographs the caves | The first Cubist paintings |
| 1933 | Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin survey the caves | Hitler comes to power |
| 2001 | World Heritage | The September 11 attacks |
One line to remember: walk east to west and watch the Buddha change his clothes.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
The five great Buddhas of Tanyao are said to portray the first five emperors of the Northern Wei. The idea goes back to the monk Faguo, who said that the emperor was the Buddha of the present age.
Source: 《魏书·释老志》 records Faguo's saying; which Buddha is which emperor is guesswork
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Checked 2026-11-12 Yungang Academy, which runs the site. Tickets are sold through its WeChat account and authorised platforms.
Last checked 2026-11-12. The Yungang ticket rules of 2025–26 as reported in the press; the Yungang scenic area's own notices are on its WeChat account.
Checked 2026-11-12
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