Northern Shanxi's coal city turned UNESCO — Yungang Grottoes and the Hanging Monastery
Datong is a gritty coal-mining city in northern Shanxi that contains two of China's greatest artistic treasures: the Yungang Grottoes, where 252 caves hold 51,000 Buddhist sculptures carved into sandstone cliffs between 460–525 CE, and the Xuankong Temple (Hanging Monastery), an ancient temple suspended against a sheer cliff face by wooden beams. The Nine Dragon Wall (1392) in the old city is China's oldest and largest imperial dragon screen.
Datong was the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386–534 CE), the first dynasty to unify northern China after centuries of division. The Northern Wei emperors were fervent Buddhists and commissioned the Yungang Grottoes as a form of religious legitimacy and artistic monument that rivalled anything in the Buddhist world — the colossal seated Buddhas in Caves 5 and 6 stand over 17m tall. The dynasty later moved its capital to Luoyang, beginning a second great Buddhist sculpture project there (the Longmen Grottoes). Datong later flourished as a Liao and Jin Dynasty garrison city.