The Kizil caves are cut into a sandstone cliff on the northern edge of the Tarim basin, near Kucha in Aksu prefecture. There are some two hundred and thirty caves in the group, and the earliest of the paintings dates from around the third century, which makes this the oldest substantial body of Buddhist cave art in China.
Why they matter
The caves were made over a period of several hundred years, when Kucha was one of the principal oasis kingdoms on the northern Silk Road and a major centre for the transmission of Buddhism from Central Asia into China. The artists worked in a tradition that came from Gandhara and the Indian subcontinent, and the paintings are close in style to those of Bamiyan and the cave temples of western India - figures modelled with shaded flesh tones, arranged in narrative scenes and in rows of repeated images. The subject matter is largely Jataka tales, the stories of the Buddha's previous lives, and depictions of the Buddha's teaching.
What you see
The caves run along the cliff face, and visitors follow a walkway from one to the next, up and along the rock. Not all the caves are open at any one time, and conservation limits access to those with the best preserved painting. Inside, the ceilings and side walls carry the surviving murals, some of them badly damaged by time, by water and by early twentieth-century expeditions that removed large sections of the best work to collections in Europe. What remains is fragmentary but still legible, and the colour - blues, greens, reds and ochres derived from mineral pigments - is remarkable.
Practical notes
Kizil is about seventy kilometres from Kucha, which is on the railway and accessible by road from Urumqi or Korla; the site is usually visited as a day trip from Kucha. There is an entrance fee, and photography inside the caves is restricted or prohibited to protect the pigments, so check at the gate. Allow two to three hours. The site is exposed and hot in summer, so bring water, a hat and sun protection, and wear shoes with grip for the stairways.
