Bingling Temple Travel Guide

The Bingling Temple is a series of grottoes filled with Buddhist sculpture carved into natural caves and caverns in a canyon along the Yellow River. It lies just north of where the Yellow River empties into the Liujiaxia Reservoir created by the Liujiaxia Dam at Yongjing, about 80km from Lanzhou. Administratively, the site is in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province.Grottoes in Bingling Temple is situated on the rock of west cliff in Dasi Gully on Xiaojishi Mountain on the north bank of the Yellow River, a place about 40 kilometers southwest of Yongjing County of Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Northwest China's Gansu Province. Seen from the opposite bank, Dasi Gully, like a natural art hall made by the God with magic, gives people an impression of profound mystery and glory.The grottoes in Bingling Temple include Shang Temple, Xia Temple, Wild Stork Gully, Buddha Temple and Shuilian Cave, etc, with more than 200 niches. Among them Xia Temple is the most valuable one. According to the extant calligraphic epigraph in No. 169 Grottoes, the grottoes in Bingling Temple were first carved in the Western Qin era (385-431) of the Sixteen Kingdoms Period (304-439). It experienced continuous cutting and repairs almost in every dynasty. Currently there are about 776 Buddhist sculptures and statues made of stone or clay, and about one thousand square meters of murals.