Now in Dunghuang City, we drove to Mogao Grottos. 'Mo' means desert, Dunhuang is located on the border of the Gobi Desert; and ' gao' means 'high', we are at great altitude. 
The Grottos were a place for prayer and meditation for the Buddhist people and are richly decorated with images and statues of Buddha, Bodhisattva and Apsaras. They were originally mostly open-air, but in the 1950s the Dunhuang Academy built protective hoardings to preserve the works from the elements. These works were, in a word, magnificent. Such rich colours, even though changed now by oxidation over the ages, and detail, and the change of design as the grottos were added to in different periods.
The first cave we entered contained at 25 foot statue of Buddha standing, 
the wall surrounding him containing One Thousand (not literal) Buddhas. This had been built over 29 years, first carved in the rockface, coated with straw and clay, then painted with mineral dyes. Time had revealed some of its inner construction, but it was still amazing.
In the next we saw a Reclining Buddha who had found Nirvana. This too was of great scale, and he was overlooked by 72 bas-relief statues of common folk which included many different ethnicities. The ceiling of this cave was tomb-like, fitting the scene.
In 1900 a self-appointed curator for the area, 
Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu, saw a crack in the hill and upon futher investigation 'The Hidden Library' was discovered -- a tomb containing many thousands of scrolls spanning hundreds of years. These scrolls now reside in museums around the world, but the tomb itself remains.
The Mogao Grottos were spectacular and must be seen. Photography of any kind is not allowed. Copies of the murals exist about Dunhuang, but they cannot compare to seeing the real thing.
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