Magnificent grottoes hollowed out in a mountain along China’s Silk Road, Maijishan represents 1,800 years of artistic tradition and the intersection of multiple peoples. Global Heritage Fund is partnering with the Maijishan Grottoes Art Research Institute (MARI) to expand management training and improve experiences through better visitor flow and interpretation.

China has a unique relationship with historic conservation. Spanning countless generations and containing innumerable ancient monuments throughout its vast territory, China’s millennia-old civilization has produced a rich cultural tradition. Nowadays, the country has 53 properties inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, second only to Italy in its total number of sites.

Despite these impressive accolades, China’s road to cultural conservation has been fraught with challenges.  During the past decade, the government has made efforts to improve cultural heritage recognition and protection through policy changes, education programs, and even the use of high-tech solutions such as drones to document and preserve cultural sites.

Although China has allotted extensive resources to the conservation of cultural and historic sites within the country, these changes can leave unexpected gaps in capacity. Nada Hosking, our Director of Programs and Partnerships, explains that training for heritage management is in high demand: “China has learned the hard way that destroying all the old to make way for the new isn’t a good approach. However, the problem is that they now need more training for heritage management.”

After the religious community of Maijishan departed, most of Maijishan fell into neglect. In the absence of artificial lighting, this grotto has fallen into darkness. ©Maijishan Grotto Art Institute and Global Heritage Fund

That is where international NGOs like Global Heritage Fund come in. Because there is already so much capital dedicated to the conservation of Chinese sites, Global Heritage Fund is able to focus on capacity building for sites that already benefit from strong conservation programs. Rather than working to identify and create protected areas for historic sites, our team can focus on expanding capacity and management training for personnel who are already committed to the protection of China’s historic places.

Maijishan is one such historic site. A series of cave temple complexes developed from the fifth to the 18th centuries, Maijishan is a unique historical record of Buddhist religious activity and cross-cultural pollination along the Silk Road. The mountain’s 194 grottoes come in seven architectural variations, are home to over 7,000 statues, and are covered in more than 100 square meters of murals. Everything is dedicated to the pursuit of Buddhism, from the artworks depicting the birth of Siddhartha to bodhisattvas contorting themselves in meditation to the arrival of new devotees.

“This is one of the most overlooked sites in China,” says Kuanghan Li, Director of our China Heritage Program. “These places were built by imperial families for hundreds of years.”

The grottoes are carved out of a vertical cliff face and can only be accessed via a narrow cantilever concrete walkway, which at its highest point hangs 80m above ground.

Like many cultural sites in China, Maijishan suffers from unplanned tourism development and crowding. All the grottoes are carved out of a vertical cliff face and can only be accessed via a narrow cantilever concrete walkway, which at its highest point hangs 80m above ground. During 2016’s May Day holiday, over 30,000 people visited the site in a single day, exceeding all past records and far above the previous calculation of optimum carrying capacity at 4000 people per day. Furthermore, Maijishan lacks much of the documentation and planning of other Chinese grottoes, making it difficult to understand the scope and extent of the threats to the site’s built heritage. Difficult access to the caves and lack of in-situ interpretation facilities further impact the visitor experiences.

In Maijishan, we are partnering with the Maijishan Grottoes Art Research Institute (MARI) to expand management training and improve experiences through better visitor flow and interpretation. Established in 1953, MARI comprises a conservation laboratory, art history research center, archive and library collection, office, and public policies and security divisions. MARI also provides services related to preservation, research, and tourist reception. It was in relation to these services that MARI invited Global Heritage Fund to evaluate Maijishan and identify areas for improvement. Last year, we brought international heritage management experts to Maijishan during its busiest holiday period, carefully observing the crowd, recording their observations, and developing a rough outline of visitor management strategies.

Maijishan requires innovative solutions to enhance access in a way that does not compromise visitor experience nor impose on surrounding communities. A number of major improvements are currently in development, including staff and management training to build leadership capacity. In addition to potential on- and off-site conservation training, senior staff may even travel to the United States for training within the national parks systems on visitor management.

Global Heritage Fund is hopeful that future conservation at the site may even involve some of the new technologies taking the heritage world by storm. As Nada explains, “We’d like to do some projects with augmented and virtual reality. But of course, that depends on so many factors.”

Among the four major grottoes in China, Maijishan is given the term “Gallery of Sculptures from the East” due to the significance and scale of sculptures present in it. With the planned improvements to Maijishan, visitors will soon to better able to fully witness and appreciate the wonders of these historic grottoes.

Parts of this article previously appeared in the article “Inside the Lost Grottoes of Maijishan.”