15
Location: Baotou
Today was day 15 of our China adventure! We woke up in the nicest hotel so far and had a nice breakfast before heading out on a bus ride to the Buddhist Caves. The caves had many different sculptures and statues inside them, some even with color still intact. They ranged from the size of my hand until 15.6 meters, about the same size as me, stacked ten times. The sculptures had gorgeous colors, such as gold and blue. The hair on the sculptures were blue, representing heaven. The sculptures were also depicted in the same 15 hand motions, each of them containing a different message. A lot of the caves also had huge amounts of holes burrowed into the historical sculptures that were used to support scaffolding during restoration. In my personal opinion, if the ancient people could carve and build the temple, our modern-day historians could salvage it. This made me a bit sad. After the Buddhist caves, we got on the bus and went to lunch. The lunch was fantastic, my favorite dish being very thin, glass noodles. After lunch, we went to the Hanging Monastery. I was also fascinated by the feat of engineering that is the monument hanging off of the side of the mountain. After that, we headed to the train station and boarded our overnight train to Xi’an. I can’t wait to see the Terracotta Warriors and shop at Muslim street!