Bingling Temple (Chinese: 炳靈寺) is located in Yongjing County of Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture (臨夏回族自治州) in Gansu (甘肅) province, China. ‘Bingling’ in Tibetan means ‘Thousand Buddha’, so Bingling Temple Grottoes are also called Thousand-Buddha Caves.
Altogether there are 183 caves, Cave No. 171 is amongst the biggest, the Great Maitreya Buddha sitting inside the cave is 27 meters high, the biggest statue of Bingling Temple.
The Great Maitreya Buddha was built during Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), while Buddhism reached its heyday, about two third of the caves in Bingling Temple Grottoes were made at that time.
The grottoes were a work in progress for more than a millennium, the first grotto was begun around 420 CE at the end of the Western Qin (西秦) Kingdom.
Work continued and more grottoes were added during the Wei (魏), Sui (隋), Tang (唐), Song (宋), Yuan (元), Ming (明), and Qing (清) dynasties. The style of each grotto can easily be connected to the typical artwork from its corresponding dynasty.
After the construction of Liujiaxia Dam (劉家峽大壩), some of the caves have been flooded by the water and relocated, this 8 meters long leaning Buddha is one of them.
Since the leaning Buddha was too big to move, the workers needed to cut the statue in nine pieces for relocation.
Bingling Temple is extremely remote and can only be reached during summer and fall by boat via the Liujiaxia Reservoir (劉家峽水庫), it inaccessible in the rest of the year.
