The Yungang Grottoes

Fifty-one thousand Buddhas, and the point where Indian carving became Chinese

Roughly 51,000 Buddha figures sit in as many niches here, cut into a sandstone ridge 16 km west of Datong across 53 major caves and around 1,100 smaller ones. The carving ran in three phases, the first finishing about 465, the second from about 471 to 494 under direct imperial patronage of the Northern Wei, and a third to about 525 paid for privately, and you can see the money change in the work. Beyond the scale, this is where two traditions meet and become one: the modelling arrives from south and central Asia, by way of Gandhara and the Silk Road, and leaves as something recognisably Chinese, which UNESCO describes as a successful fusion beginning in the fifth century. With Longmen and Mogao it is one of the three great Buddhist sculptural sites in China. Listed in 2001. Shanxi.