The Xiangtangshan Caves are among the most significant Buddhist cave temple complexes in China, cut into sandstone cliffs in the Fengfeng Mining District about 20 kilometres southwest of Handan during the Northern Qi dynasty in the sixth century. There are two groups — Northern Xiangtangshan and Southern Xiangtangshan — carved under the sponsorship of the Qi court, which used Buddhism as a tool of dynastic legitimacy. The scale of the ambition shows: large seated Buddhas in high relief, flanked by attendants and bodhisattvas, fill niches cut carefully into the pale stone.
What makes the site as much an object lesson as an attraction is its history of loss. In the early twentieth century, dealers and collectors systematically removed carved sections from the walls. Significant pieces are now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, the Freer Gallery in Washington, and other institutions. What remains in situ still has considerable power — enough to understand what the complete composition looked like — but standing in front of the empty niches alongside the intact reliefs gives the site an almost documentary quality.
The caves are protected, entry is inexpensive, and the surrounding landscape of limestone hills and old mining infrastructure has its own character. The combination of intact Buddhist art and documented absence makes Xiangtangshan unlike any comparable site in China.