Yulin Caves

The Yulin Caves is a Buddhist buckle sanctuary site in Guazhou County, Gansu Province, China. The site is found exactly 100 km east of the desert garden town of Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves. It takes its name from the eponymous elm trees covering the Yulin River, which moves through the site and isolates the two bluffs from which the caverns have been exhumed. The 42 caverns house nearly 250 polychrome statues and 4,200 m² of divider artistic creations, dating from the Tang Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty. The site was among the first to be assigned for insurance in 1961 as a Major National Historical and Cultural Site.

In 2008 the Yulin Grottoes were submitted for future engraving on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a major aspect of the Chinese Section of the Silk Road. The works of art are Buddhist with some common scenes, the previous including buddhas, bodhisattvas, apsara, and jataka stories; and the last mentioned, contributor pictures, go players, delegates of China's ethnic minorities, set apart out by their hairdos and dress, cultivating scenes, for example, draining a bovine, wine-production, a refining heater, and a wedding function; portrayals of artists and artists enable separate to the refinement between the holy and the profane. The depictions are not frescoes but rather executed on an earthen render with mineral and natural shades and gum or paste binders.