The Longmen Caves

Luoyang, to the west of Zhengzhou, was a pleasant city. A nice place to hang out. Unfortunately I didn't have too long there as I needed to get to Beijing fo the 15th, but I had the best part of a whole day there, which was plenty to explore it's biggest attraction - the Longmen caves.Luoyang was capital of China from around 500AD to about a thousand years ago, when the capital moved to Kaifeng. In those days Buddhism was the national religion and the emperors and wealthy classes were devout in their religion, building huge complexes of caves containing rich carvings of Buddhas and associated figures wherever they went. Longmen is one of the top three Buddhist cave complexes in China, and was the first of the three that I visited.Unfortunately it rained the whole time, but dodging past the umbrellas I managed to get a good look and take some decent photos. There were literally hundreds of caves, of all sizes. A lot of the sculptures were in pretty bad shape, having been exposed to the elements for so long. Others had been plundered in the past and had had their heads lopped off and whole lengths of carvings cut away. But some were still in good condition and odd well-sheltered ones still had original paint inside. A rainy morning well spent.