The seated figure in Cave 5
At Huangduobao in Sanying Town, Yuanzhou District, soft red sandstone rises on Guyuan's southern edge. Cave 5, the Great Buddha Tower, opens a niche cut for a seated Maitreya from the Tang. The figure is about 20.6 meters high, the largest stone image at the site, and one ear rises about 4 meters. After three years of inspection, the niche reopened on 6 September 2023. The kasaya, the snail-shell hair, and the elongated earlobes can be read again. The mountain face is the sculpture. Smaller cave mouths continue in the same red rock, grouped at Yuan'guang Temple, Xiangguo Temple, Taohua Cave, and Zisun Gong.
From the Northern Wei to the Tang
Carving began in the late Northern Wei, in the Taihe reign of Emperor Xiaowen, between 477 and 499. Work went on through the Western Wei, the Northern Zhou, the Sui, and the Tang. The Northern Zhou and the Tang were the most active periods. Later centuries repaired what earlier hands had opened. Northern Wei images are lean. Northern Zhou images are the most numerous. Repairs continued under the Song, the Ming, and the Qing. Xumi is the name of a mountain in Buddhist cosmology. On this cliff the caves accumulated by dynasty and by group. Xiangguo Temple holds caves numbered 52 to 103. Zisun Gong, with 34 caves, is the earliest group. A survey counts 132 numbered caves plus 30 subsidiary niches, 162 in all, set in eight zones, with murals in 10 caves and 1,003 images, about 550 of them relatively intact. Those caves sit on eight peaks along about 2 kilometers. Song inscriptions remain on the rock, including one dated the twenty-second day of the third month of Shaosheng 4 that records Yao Xiong's recovery of Longgan, and another marked Chongning guiwei.
Stone that takes a chisel, and the weather
The rock is coarse Eocene sediment, willing under a chisel and quick to weather. Water works on the same softness that let Tang carvers open Cave 5. The Haiyuan earthquake of 1920, put at magnitude 8.5, collapsed caves. The State Council listed the grottoes in 1982, in the second batch of national key cultural-relic sites. In 2014 the site was rated a national AAAA attraction, and it is also a national scenic area. Mount Xumi Grottoes stands on China's 2016 Silk Road tentative list, UNESCO entry 6093. It is not an inscribed World Heritage property, and it is not part of the inscribed Silk Roads property 1442. Guyuan's submitted points, Xumishan among them, remain preparatory sites, with no date set for adding them. The seated Buddha is a national relic in the southern mountains, returned to view after the inspection that ended in September 2023.