Around half an hour drive from Shanxi's coal city Datong you can find the Yungang Buddha Grottoes. These are a series of man made niches in which more than 50´000 Buddha statues are carved in. Built during the Wei Dynasty, around 460 to 494 AD, these niches were carved in a sandstone cliff.

During the times of Japanese occupation, many of the statues got damaged and also the nearby coal mine caused damage through pollution, however, since a few years an intensive renovation program tries to save the site.

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