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Luoyang,
a city in Henan province, is known
as the “city of peonies.” Situated on the north bank of the
Luo River,
it is cut by two rivers that
flow into the Luo, the Jian to the west and Chan to the east.
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Luoyang Museum |
Henan is the heart of
ancient China. As far back as the Neolithic Era, the area was well
populated. The capital of the bronze-age Shang Dynasty
was in the present-day Anyang. Then in the 1lth century B.C., one
of the Zhou kings made his temporary capital at Luoyi near Luoyang.
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White Horse Temple (Baima Temple) |
Since 1949, the city
has grown in importance as an industrial center. It now has
machine-building works, chemical factories, textile plants, glass works
and a large tractor factory.
LONGMEN CAVES
About eight miles south of Luoyang on the Yi River, at a spot
where high cliffs on either side form a pass, is a caved area once known
as the "Gate of Yi River", which later became known as Longmen,
or the “Dragon
Gate.”
Craftsmen began work on Buddhist grottoes in 494 when an emperor of the
Northern Wei moved the capital from what is now known as Datong (Shanxi
Province) to Luoyang. The artistry is therefore an extension
from Datong. The work at Longmen proceeded through seven
dynasties, and in more than 1,300 caves, there are 40 small pagodas, and
almost 100,000 Buddha statues ranging
in size from one inch to 57 feet. These caves and the stone sculptures
they contain rank with the caves at Yungang and Dunhuang as the great
remaining masterpieces of Buddhist culture in China.
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Longmen Carve |
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