Maijishan Grottoes

The niche of Maijishan Grottoes is chiseled on a vertical cliff with a height of 20-80 meters and a width of 200 meters. There are 194 cave niches, including 54 caves in Dongya and 140 caves in Xiya. There are more than 7800 clay sculptures, stone figurines, clay sculptures and stone sculptures. The largest statue is Dongya Giant Buddha, which is 15.8 meters high and has murals of more than 1000 square meters.

Founded in the late Qin Dynasty (384-417), the grottoes are one of the four major Grottoes in China, known as the "Oriental Sculpture Museum". If Dunhuang is a large mural Museum, Maiji Mountain is a large sculpture museum. The statues here are as high as 16 meters in size and only over 10 centimeters in size, reflecting the characteristics of statues of different ages over the past thousand years and systematically reflecting the development and evolution of Chinese clay sculpture art.

Maijishan Grottoes

Maijishan grottoes, a five episode historical and cultural documentary jointly produced by CCTV integrated channel, Gansu provincial Party committee's Foreign Publicity Office and Tianshui municipal Party committee's publicity department, was broadcast on CCTV integrated channel "Chinese nation" at 12:30 p.m. from July 13 to August 10, 2015, with 30 minutes for each episode.

brief introduction

For the first time, the documentary Maijishan Grottoes systematically filmed 15 special Grottoes in Maijishan. It is also the first time to take aerial photos of the grottoes from close range and multiple perspectives. In the narrative process, it uses the scene style virtual representation technique, plus the animation synthesis technique, tells the true story that happened in Maiji Mountain for more than 1600 years with vivid picture audio-visual effect, vividly expresses the fusion and evolution of Buddhism in China, reveals the mental journey of emperors and celebrities, and the life track of ordinary people in the historical torrent. Through the panoramic display of the grottoes, Buddha statues and murals, the important position of Maijishan Grottoes with unique research value in Chinese history is confirmed.

series

The series "Maijishan Grottoes" is a comprehensive interpretation of Maijishan Grottoes from the perspectives of archaeology, Buddhism, aesthetics, literature and so on. It is not only a large-scale Grottoes on the Silk Road, but also a miniature of history and Oriental civilization The witness of the war.

Diversity story

The story of Maijishan

In Tianshui, Gansu Province, in the continuous Qinling Mountains, a miraculous Buddhist grotto stands mysteriously and gracefully in the embrace of the deep mountains. The grottoes are famous for their exquisite clay sculpture art at home and abroad, and are known as "Oriental Sculpture Museum".

Maijishan Grottoes is one of the four major Buddhist grottoes in China. The highest place is nearly 100 meters above the ground. The caves, which are as dense as beehives, are all connected by the aerial trestle road erected on the cliff, which is extremely dangerous and steep. In the turbulent historical time and space, there are too many unknown secrets hidden in Maiji Mountain.

In 405 A.D., Yao Xing, the emperor of the later Qin Dynasty in the Sixteen States, took the eminent monk kumarashi to Chang'an to build a huge grotto on the land of the later Qin Dynasty. Maiji Mountain, located in the southeast of Qinzhou, soon became the target of Yao Xing's cave opening in Qinzhou. After several years, Maiji Mountain's early grotto Buddha statues were finally built. Buddhist believers came in droves to pay homage to the Buddha in their hearts. After being moved and shocked in their hearts, there was also an entity of conversion in their faith.

Yao Xing excavated the earliest Royal Grottoes in northern central China in Maiji Mountain, but this is only the beginning. When history changes and times change, what kind of conflict will Buddhism have with the local beliefs of China? What kind of fate will Maijishan encounter next?

The world of Buddha

Since the Han Dynasty, the silk road has witnessed not only the footprints of camel caravans, the busyness of merchants, but also the frequent visits of monks from western regions. These vivid Buddha statues in Maijishan grottoes are the immortal witness of the silk road.

There are 221 numbered caves in Maijishan grottoes, preserving more than 7800 sculptures with different styles and characteristics in different periods of history. In the Northern Wei Dynasty, it was the peak of Maijishan statue. One of them is a little monk who is less than one meter tall. His sweet smile has left a deep impression on people, as if to bring us to a wonderful Buddhist world. Little Shami has experienced the changes of space and time for thousands of years, and his smile can still deeply move people's hearts.

Today, more than a thousand years later, Duan Yiming, a sculptor who is copying the little monk, graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Arts and crafts. After graduating from University, Duan Yiming has worked in Maijishan Grottoes for 28 years.

Years here precipitated a thousand years of time, flowing in the long river of time. Looking back, whether ancient painters and craftsmen, or today's sculptors and restorers, they are full of creative passion. With their hands or unconventional beliefs, with a paintbrush or the most simple feelings, they constantly create the myth of Maiji Mountain Grottoes art, depicting the silent flowing and eternal smiling Buddha of Maiji Mountain.

The Buddha Pavilion in the sky

In 1675 A.D., an old man came to Ruiying temple at the foot of Maiji Mountain. He was deeply moved by the beautiful scenery of Maiji Mountain and the thousand year old ancient Buddha. This old man was the famous calligrapher Wang Liaowang during the reign of Kangxi. After living for a few days, he wrote down "Shi Wu, etc." later generations made a plaque and hung it in the Sanhua building on the plank road of the seven Buddha Pavilion on Maiji Mountain.

Maiji Mountain has three seven Buddha pavilions, of which the "upper seven Buddha Pavilions" is the most magnificent. In the murals of shangqifo Pavilion, Feitian has a very unique appearance. Their faces and body parts are covered with a thin layer of mud, which is called "thin meat sculpture" Feitian by experts. This kind of three-dimensional mural made by the combination of sculpture and painting, plane and three-dimensional is extremely rare in ancient Chinese murals.

Yang Xiaodong is a contemporary oil painter. As soon as he graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the University, he came to Maijishan at the age of 23 to copy murals. In 2012, Yang Xiaodong's mural work of cave 127 of Maijishan grottoes, the change of the pure land in the west, was exhibited in the International Biennial of Liverpool, which caused a sensation. When Western audiences see these exquisite murals, they marvel that China, an ancient country, has not only Buddhist art like Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, but also exquisite Buddhist cave murals like Maiji Mountain.

It is moving and shocking that nature's creation and human's creation collide with such a miracle. Submerged in the dust of time, Maiji Mountain sleeps in an eternal cliff, escapes from secular harassment and destruction, waiting for people to uncover its mysterious veil.

The secret of immortality

Maijishan Grottoes had its most glorious period in the northern and Southern Dynasties since the founding of the later Qin Dynasty, but after the Song Dynasty, Maijishan gradually disappeared into the stage of history. In the late autumn of 1941, in the Qinling Mountains, 50 kilometers southeast of Tianshui City, a group of people mysteriously loomed among the trees. What they were looking for was Maiji Mountain, and one of the explorers was Feng Guorui, who was born in Tianshui. Through historical documents, Feng Guorui had a great interest in Maijishan. It was this spirit of exploration that more and more people began to explore Maijishan and look for immortal secrets.

The smile of the East

Sculpture pursues the beauty of solidifying immortality. Buddhism explores the eternity of flow and change. Under the dust of a thousand years, generations of craftsmen in Maijishan inherit the vitality of these Buddha statues, brew the flowing eternity, and carve the Oriental smile, which has been full of vicissitudes.

The three great Buddhas, located on the eastern cliff of Maiji Mountain, were built in the Sui Dynasty. The Buddha's eyes passed through the thick autumn of Maiji Mountain and hung down in the sky of the world. In the spring of 1982, the Maijishan Grottoes Research Institute was repairing the Dongya Giant Buddha. A craftsman's hand suddenly met an unusual thing on the Buddha's face. The craftsman carefully took it out, but was surprised to find that it was a bowl full of words. The appearance of this bowl opened up an unknown past of Maijishan. Next, experts quickly found three slightly fuzzy names "Gao Zhentong" at the bottom of the bowl.

These three words brought us to the Shaoxing period of the Southern Song Dynasty more than 1300 years ago. When Gao Zhentong, a craftsman of Gangu County, was repairing the Buddha, he inadvertently left a white glazed porcelain bowl of Yaozhou in the "baihaoxiang" of the Buddha. It never occurred to him that the porcelain bowl used for color mixing made him the most famous craftsman in the history of Maijishan grottoes.

At the foot of Maiji Mountain are villages of all sizes. Most of the people here are farmers. Mu Changyou's master's home is more than ten miles away from Maijishan grottoes. In the words of Mou Changyou, he can see this magical and beautiful mountain from the village. Different from ordinary farmers, he has another identity, that is, a restorer of Maijishan Grottoes Art Research Institute. Every day, Mou Changyou often goes back and forth between the village and the Maijishan grottoes. As soon as he goes, he has gone for 28 years. These people living around Maiji Mountain seem to be naturally attracted by this Gufeng mountain. They silently give back to the land where they were born.

After the glory of history, Maiji Mountain is hidden in thousands of years. Through the history of the morning bell and evening drum, these smiling Buddha statues appear and disappear in the rain. Those from the foot of Maiji Mountain

Chinese PinYin : Mai Ji Shan Shi Ku