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Mati Horseshoe Temple
Gansu Mati Horseshoe Temple is a temple built on a cliff with a history of 1,600 years. Horseshoe Temple is located in Horseshoe Tibetan Township, Sunan Yugu Ethnic Autonomous County, Gansu Province, 65 kilometers north of Zhangye City. Horseshoe Temple is a tourist area integrating grottoes art, Qilian Mountain scenery and Tibetan customs.
The grottoes are composed of seven places, namely, shengguo Temple, Puguang Temple, Thousand Buddha Cave, Golden Pogada Temple, Upper, Middle and Lower Guanyin Cave, with more than 70 grottoes and niches. The Horseshoe Temple is named after the legendary Sky horse drinking water here and leaving horseshoe marks. The legendary horseshoe imprint exists in the Puguang Temple horseshoe hall, become the treasure of the Mati Horseshoe temple.
The Horseshoe Temple Grottoes are a large group in scale. It includes seven small grottoes group, meandering nearly 30 kilometers, is a national cultural relics protection units. The earliest of these grottoes was built in the Jin Dynasty and dug by Guo Yu and his disciples. The grottoes were first Guo's secluded lecture place, and later generations added the statues of Buddha and it eventually became a temple. In its peak time, the Horseshoe Temple had more than 300 monks. Because of their long history, the horseshoe Grottoes are called the three major art grottoes in Hexi Buddhist Resort as grottoes of Dunhuang and Anxi. The Horseshoe Temple Grottoes has a history of more than 1,600 years. It is one of the cultural relics with a long history and high artistic value in Gansu Province.
Most of the thirty-three days of grottoes, horseshoe print grottoes, Tibetan Buddha Temple grottoes, Shengguo Temple, and Thousand Buddha Cave grottoes existing in the Horseshoe Temple were restored after the reform and opening up in 1980’s. But the main buildings in the temple, such as the Great Hall, Station Buddha Hall, Guanyin Hall, pharmacist Hall and so on, are mostly old traces of the Ming dynasty in 15th century. Although these pavilions have experienced a hundred years of wind and rain, but still towering on the cliff, giving people a great shock in vision and soul. The Horseshoe Temple is amazing at the excellent architectural skills of the ancients. The many cultural relics in the temple, such as the Standing Buddha of the Jin Dynasty, the Manjusri Bodhisattva sword of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the dragon robe of the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and the saddle of Emperor Qianlong, make people sigh at the vicissitudes of history and the glory of the Horseshoe Temple.
The unique feature of the Horseshoe Temple grottoes is that there are more than 500 cliff pagoda niches, large scale. Jinta Temple in the large meat carving flying sky simple and elegant, for the only in China. The 33 days of Puguang Temple cave, up and down five floors 21 grottoes, pagoda shape arrangement, inside the temple, outside the corridor, a total of inside and outside grottoes up to 49 holes, strange shape.
Horseshoe Temple has a beautiful environment, green mountains, beautiful water, strange peaks, different caves can be called four unique. Tourists can also live in Tibetan tents, drink barley wine, eat hand-grabbed meat, and experience the unique lifestyle and cultural characteristics of the grassland nomads.
The Horseshoe Temple is one of the Buddhist shrine in the Hexi Corridor of China. In the early days, Tibetan Buddhism flourished here after the Yuan Dynasty, and both Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism coexisted simultaneously. In Tibetan, the Horseshoe Temple is called "Zhuoma Rangxiang", which means the place where the Bodhisattva naturally appears. The 3rd Dalai Lama Sonan Gyatso also came here to pilgrimage, and believers in Qinghai and other places take it as regret all their life if they can not come here to worship Buddha.
Zhangye Tour Routes and Packages:
1. Six-day Great Wall & Dunhuang Tour
Zhangye Tour Routes and Packages:
1. Six-day Great Wall & Dunhuang Tour
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