3-Day Tianshui: the Maijishan Grottoes, the Fuxi Temple & the Old City

Morning - the Nanguo Temple
Tianshui sits in a narrow river valley in eastern Gansu, between the Qinling range and the Loess Plateau, and it has been a town on the road west since the Qin dynasty. We start on Huiyin Hill, in the hollow behind the city, at the Nanguo Temple - a small complex of halls and courtyards built under tall trees, and the reason most Chinese visitors come here at all.

In 759 the poet Du Fu, displaced by the An Lushan rebellion, spent several months in Qinzhou - modern Tianshui - and climbed this hill. The verses he wrote that autumn, the Qinzhou Poems, are among the bleakest and best of his career, and the temple keeps a small shrine to him. In the courtyard below the main hall is the North-Flowing Spring, whose name appears in the same poems: it runs north out of the hill and does not join the valley river. The setting is calm and the walking is easy, with a little climbing between terraces.

Lunch
Tianshui cooking is closer to Shaanxi than to Gansu's west: hand-pulled noodles, wheat gluten, chilli oil and vinegar. Your guide orders the local breakfast-style noodles, a cold dish and a soup. A mild table is arranged alongside.

Afternoon - the Yuquan Temple
Across the valley, the Yuquan Temple occupies the north slope of Tianjing Hill. It was founded in the Yuan dynasty and expanded in the Ming and Qing, and it sits in a series of terraces climbing the hillside, with groves of cypress and a spring that gives the place its name. The halls hold Ming and Qing murals that are rarely visited and never crowded, and the highest terrace looks back across the whole of Tianshui - the river, the bridges, and the loess hills closing off the valley at either end.

Late afternoon - the old city
The old town has shrunk to a few surviving streets around the Fuxi temple compound, but what is left is worth an hour: courtyard houses, a market street, and small workshops making the local lacquer and carved lacquer boxes. Your guide walks you through the lanes and explains how Tianshui fitted into the Silk Road - not as a great city, but as the first place where the road out of the Wei River valley begins to climb.

Evening
Dinner is at a local restaurant in the old town; the guide then returns you to your hotel.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight at a 4-star or equivalent hotel in Tianshui, twin share, with daily breakfast.

Morning — Maijishan
Maijishan means "wheatstack mountain", and the name is exact: a rounded, isolated outcrop of red conglomerate rising straight out of the forest. Caves were cut into its face from the Later Qin period, in the late fourth century, and work continued for roughly a thousand years through the Northern Wei, Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, Tang and into the Song. More than two hundred caves and niches survive, holding well over seven thousand clay figures and a substantial body of mural painting — which is why the site is known in Chinese as the Oriental Sculpture Gallery.

Mid-morning — The cliff walkways
The caves are reached on a system of plank walkways and landings bolted to the cliff, climbing in places through several storeys. Some are sheltered and some are open to the drop, and anyone unhappy with heights can stay on the lower circuit and still see the great figures. The most famous is the large triad carved in high relief on the eastern face, of a scale that reads clearly from the valley floor; the smaller caves hold seated and standing Buddhas, bodhisattvas and donor figures, many of them restored but many original.

Cultural Insight
Unlike the stone-cut caves at Yungang and Longmen, most of the sculpture at Maijishan is modelled in clay over a wooden armature and then painted. The material is fragile, which is why so much of it has been repaired over the centuries — but it also allowed a softness of expression that stone carving rarely achieves, and the Western Wei figures in particular are among the most delicate in Chinese art.

Lunch
A restaurant near the site entrance, with Tianshui's wheat noodles and cold dishes.

Afternoon — The lower caves and the valley
The rest of the visit covers the lower tier of caves and the temple buildings at the foot of the outcrop, with time to walk the approach road back through the trees. The site closes to new visitors in the mid-afternoon in most seasons, so the day is front-loaded and the pace is set by the reservation. A small number of caves are classified as special caves and require a separate ticket arranged in advance.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Overnight in Tianshui.

Morning — Fuxi Temple
The temple is a Ming complex laid out on a long axis through successive gate courts, built around the middle of the fifteenth century on a site that had been used for the cult of Fuxi for much longer. The main hall houses a statue of Fuxi, the culture hero credited with teaching fishing, trapping, the eight trigrams and the ordering of marriage, and whom local tradition places at birth in this part of the Wei River valley. The courtyards hold very old cypresses, some of them several centuries old and propped up on supports, which give the place more character than most temple complexes of its rank.

Cultural Insight
Tianshui's claim on Fuxi is old enough to have shaped the city's layout, and the cult continues: a formal ceremony is held at the temple each year, and the site functions as both a temple and a civic monument.

Late morning — The old quarter
Depending on your departure time, a short walk through the lanes around the temple, where the low courtyard houses and a handful of surviving gate towers give a sense of the older town. Your guide then handles the checkout and the transfer.

Afternoon — Departure
Your guide and driver take you to Tianshui railway station or to the airport for your onward journey, with time allowed for ticketing and security.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
Departure day - no hotel night included.