On the grassland 30 kilometers east of the main peak of the Albas mountain in the west of Inner Mongolia, a towering flat topped table shaped hill is particularly striking. The hill is about 200 meters long from east to west, 70 to 90 meters wide from north to south, and 40 meters high vertically. On the red sandstone cliffs around the mountain, there are many caves, large and small, which are called " Hundred eyes kiln" by local people. This is alzhai grottoes, the largest grotto complex in grassland area in the world.

Alzhai means "flat and uplifted" in Mongolian. It is believed that alzhai grottoes are "the only remaining relics of late Buddhist grottoes" in the grassland area to the north of the great wall of China, especially the nearly one thousand, more than 2000 square meters of color murals in the grottoes are precious enough, so it is called "grassland Dunhuang".

At present, cultural relics workers have found 65 caves, 22 relief towers and other remains here. In addition to a large number of religious content, murals also have precious secular murals such as the Genghis Khan family worship map and the Mongolian emperor funeral map. In addition, there are many early Tibetan and Uighur Mongolian inscriptions in the grottoes, which is one of the most discovered sites in the world.

It is believed that the Arzhai grottoes were built 1600 years ago. It is a treasure house of Buddhist art integrating temples, grottoes, cliff carvings, murals, sculptures and inscriptions. It is also a rare historical material for studying ancient history, culture and customs.

According to experts' research, some of the grottoes and buildings here were destroyed at the end of Ming Dynasty. In addition to the wind and rain erosion and human impact in the following hundreds of years, the grottoes collapsed and were seriously damaged. Subsequently, the state and local government invested a lot of money to protect the grottoes, and organized experts and scholars to conduct extensive research on them. On this basis, in August 2018, the government of etoke banner launched the Arzhai Grottoes mural and rock mass protection project, entrusted Dunhuang Research Institute to organize the implementation. At present, the grottoes body reinforcement project is basically completed, and the whole project is planned to be completed in 2021.

Source: Xinhua net

Time: October 22