When touring the places of interest in the Hexi Corridor, people will visit the must-see grottos. People began to dig the cliffs and carve as early as the Jin Dynasty, through the dynasties of the South and North, till the Tang Dynasty. But why did people bother to carve statues and sculptures of the Buddha and his apostles endlessly in the northwestern part of China? Because Buddhism prevailed at that time, people sought to find peace of mind amid tumult and hardship.

There are many grottos in the Corridor, but some of them are not accessible to a senior like me. I recommend two sites that are worth visiting: Bingling Temple and Mogao Cave. 

To access Bingling Temple, tourists must ride a speedboat from the pier of the bay connecting the Yellow River to get there. It was a wonderful experience for me, sweeping over the surface of water on a speedy boat for forty minutes before reaching the temple. Because the caves are closed to tourists, they can only stroll along the flat, lightly sinuous path to view the caves hanging on the cliffs. Finally, we reached the giant Buddha statue, and not far from it, we were enjoying our picnic in a pavilion.

Mogao Cave is the largest grotto group in the Hexi Corridor (or the biggest in the whole Chinese Mainland). Its well-preserved caves, the seasoned interpreter, as well as the splendid night audio-visual show, must give the tourists an unforgettable memory. Sadly, I finally came to see the cave, the one I learned about in college, which once contained numerous sutras, but all were stolen and sold to Western archaeologists and merchants in 1901.