China News Agency, Taiyuan, March 14 (Yang Peipei and Hu Jian) ​​On the 14th, the fifth cave, where the largest Buddha statue in the Yungang Grottoes, a world cultural heritage, was completed and opened to the outside world.

  The fifth cave is 17.4 meters high, 18.7 meters wide and 13 meters deep.

The shape of the cave is a large statue cave, the back wall is carved with chanting and worshipping, and the subject of the statue is the three Buddhas.

There are more than 150 statue niches and more than 2,300 statues in the cave, with different postures.

The main statue is 17.4 meters high, which is the highest of Yungang Buddha statues.

There is an extremely handsome Buddha statue in the corner of the second floor on the east side of the attic, which is known as the most beautiful Buddha statue in Yungang.

  In addition, on both sides of the top of the south wall of Cave 5, there are five-layered Xumi high-relief stupa on both sides of the elephant. The tower is 4.5 meters high, and the tower is a pavilion-style building.

Among them, ancient craftsmen combined traditional Chinese architectural art and Indian Buddhist art to form a unique architectural style. This is the representative work of the Northern Wei Dynasty statue art when it reached its peak, and it is also a classic work in the Yungang Grottoes Pagoda.

  In history, Cave 5 has been repaired many times.

The "three-year protection project" from 1974 to 1976 was the first large-scale maintenance of the Yungang Grottoes. At that time, a large number of caves and carvings were on the verge of collapse, the stability of the caves was very poor, and maintenance and protection was imminent, including the fifth cave.

  On June 29, 2015, in Cave 5, which was being opened, a rock on the top of a Buddhist shrine suddenly fell.

The Yungang Research Institute immediately closed the cave and carried out a disease investigation.

During the investigation, a large number of small-scale diseases such as warping and weathering cracks were found.

In order to prevent such incidents from happening again, the routine maintenance of Yungang Grottoes has become the norm.

  Yungang Grottoes is located at the foot of Wuzhou Mountain, 16 kilometers west of Datong, Shanxi Province. It was built in the Heping period of the Northern Wei Dynasty. There are 45 main caves, a total of more than 1,100 small niches and more than 59,000 statues. It is one of the largest grottoes in China.

In 2001, the Yungang Grottoes were included in the World Cultural Heritage List by UNESCO.

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