The Longmen Grottoes were dug in the reign of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and after more than 400 years of large-scale construction in the Eastern Wei Dynasty, the Western Wei Dynasty, the Northern Qi Dynasty, the Sui Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, the length from north to south was 1 km. Today, there are 2,345 grottoes, more than 654.38 million statues and more than 2,800 inscriptions. Among them, Longmen Twenty is the essence of Weibei calligraphy, and Chu Suiliang's A Que Buddhist Shrine Monument is a model of regular script art in the early Tang Dynasty.
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Cultural significance
Longmen Grottoes is the most concentrated place where royal nobles made wishes and statues in the Northern Wei and Tang Dynasties. It embodies the will and behavior of the royal family and has a strong ethnic and religious color. The statues of the two dynasties reflect very different styles of the times. The statues in the Northern Wei Dynasty lost the rough, majestic and vigorous features of the statues in Yungang Grottoes here, but the flavor of life gradually became strong and tended to be lively, delicate and gentle.
These statues of the Northern Wei Dynasty have slender faces, thin shoulders and straight chests, and clothes lines are carved with straight knives, which are vigorous and simple. Among the numerous caves carved in the Northern Wei Dynasty, the most representative ones are Guyang Cave, Binyang Middle Cave, Lotus Cave and Cave Temple.
Among them, Guyangdong concentrated a group of statues of royal aristocrats and court ministers in the early stage of the Northern Wei Dynasty's move to Luoyang, which typically reflected the historical model of the Northern Wei Dynasty's national worship of Buddhism. These magnificent stone carvings are precious records of the integration of China traditional culture and foreign civilization.
Baidu encyclopedia-Longmen grottoes