Gansu-Qinghai-Ningxia Road Trip (19) World Heritage Site - Bingling Temple Grottoes

Travel with Trip.com Season 16 - Gansu-Qinghai-Ningxia Road Trip (19) World Heritage Site - Bingling Temple Grottoes Haidong, Qinghai - Huangnan - Linxia, Gansu Sep 14, 2023 Sunny to cloudy, 8-30°C, max altitude 2,300m. Today we bid farewell to Qinghai after 8 days of sightseeing and return to Gansu. The Yellow River, the mother river of the Chinese nation, meanders eastward through the northwest. To attract tourists and develop tourism, many places have claimed to be the "First Bend of the Yellow River". The place we stayed last night, Hualong County, also claims to be the "First Bend". We took off and filmed a section of the river at a suitable location along the way (Pic 1). The Yellow River here is even clearer than what we saw in Guide the day before yesterday. The Yellow River flows slowly here, as smooth as a mirror (Pic 2). We set off for Bingling Temple in Linxia Prefecture. We drove on a winding road for nearly 25 km, which was quite tiring, but we saw some nice scenery (Pic 3). We arrived at Bingling Temple in the afternoon. Bingling Temple Grottoes (World Heritage Site, 5A) (Pic 4) is located in Yongjing County. It was first built in the first year of Jianhong in the Western Qin Dynasty (420 AD), with a history of more than 1,600 years. On the steep red sandstone cliffs, which are 2 km long from north to south, the grottoes and niches are lined up, and the statues are well preserved and lifelike (Pic 5, Cave 70, Eleven-faced Avalokitesvara with Eight Arms). Niche 171 is the third largest Maitreya Buddha statue in Gansu (Pic 6). The relief pagodas and esoteric murals of Bingling Temple are as famous as the Mogao Grottoes and Maijishan Grottoes. Compared with other famous grottoes, it has a bay of clear water (downstream of Liujiaxia Reservoir, which has been turbid due to rain in the past two days), which adds to its aura; it has a cluster of peaks, which makes it more beautiful (Pic 7). The "Sister Peaks" at the entrance are one of the main symbols of Bingling Temple (Pic 8). We left Bingling Temple and passed by Lijiaxia Reservoir, where China's first million-kilowatt hydropower station was built, known as the "Blue Yellow River" (Pic 9). We arrived at our destination in the evening, a beautiful small town - Yongjing County. Tomorrow we will head to Gannan.