June 2014 - Longmen Grottoes, China
The Longmen Grottoes are an amazing place with tens of thousands of statues of Buddha, ranging from super tiny to enormous.
The Longmen Grottoes are an amazing place with tens of thousands of statues of Buddha, ranging from super tiny to enormous.
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| The absolutely enormous main set of statues | ||
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| A cave full of mini-Buddhas | Some really beautiful sculptures, along with thousands of micro-Buddhas on the walls | Slightly faded micro-Buddhas |
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| Buddhas of all sizes. More than any other one, this grotto reminded me of a church. | Buddhas along the stairs | |
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| Climbing up to a higher level of grottoes | ||
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| The faded remains of a once great doorway | Apparently the classic Chinese picture pose goes back a long way | It's a shame that this pose didn't catch on |
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| Another grotto with a pretty Christian feel to it | Grottoes of all sizes | |
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| The Yi river | The path along the river and the grotto hill | The hill with all of the grottoes carved into it |
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| Across the river, a little temple | The Xiangshan Temple | |
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| Over at the temple they are _incredibly_ serious about keeping males out of the women's restroom | Even hundreds miles outside of Beijing and away from a major city, pollution limited visibility to a few hundred feet. It looked like this the whole 500 mile train ride to Luoyang. | |
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| An enormous city that I'd never heard of. There seem to be many of these in China. |