How old is the ninth floor?

As soon as you enter the Mogao Grottoes, the first thing you see is the tallest building in this cave. It is also the 96th Cave of Mogao Grottoes, which people used to call the "Great Buddha Hall".

This giant Buddha was built in the Tang Dynasty, so the statue of Maitreya Buddha and Bodhisattva is very round and typical of the Tang Dynasty. It is said that when Wu Zetian was in power at that time, in order to consolidate his throne, he publicized himself to the public as the incarnation of Maitreya Buddha and Bodhisattva, so it seems that we can still find many women's characteristics in the statues at that time, which was influenced by the background of that time.

The ninth floor has undergone several reconstructions before and after. There were only two floors at first, and it was not until the Republic of China that it was converted into nine floors. The magnificent building with red cornices that we see now was reinforced and maintained by Dunhuang Research Institute in 1986.