Mati Temple in Zhangye

Deeply impressed by the miraculous handiwork of nature at the Peach Blossom Land. ||📍Gansu Zhangye Mati Temple Tourist Attraction 🐒Must-see and fun: Qilian scenery, grotto murals, pavilion architecture, the joy of crawling through narrow tunnels, offering incense and praying for blessings 🎬Watch the documentary 'Hexi Corridor·Roots' before going to enhance understanding. 🐾Climbing inside the palace, steep and narrow with dust, do not wear skirts, try to avoid light-colored clothes, go lightly equipped. . 🌲 At the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, amidst the chaos of the dynasty, Zhangye on the Hexi Corridor still maintained relative stability and tranquility. Therefore, the great scholar Guo He and his disciples fled to Hexi. After a long and arduous journey, when they arrived at the Linsong Xie Valley at the foot of Mati Mountain in Zhangye County, they stopped. The undulating pine waves and the lush green mountains and valleys gave them the power of inner peace, and Guo He chose this place as a haven for living and teaching, preaching, and solving doubts. 🌲 Later, a young man from Dunhuang, Guo Yu, came to admire and became a disciple of Guo He. After his teacher's death, he carried on his mentor's legacy, promoting the Confucian culture. Besides studying, he also led his disciples to carve grottoes in Mati Mountain for teaching and practicing. In the peaceful valley, the sound of chiseling echoed. And in the distant future, the Mati Temple grottoes became a witness to the intersection of Confucianism and Buddhism, two great civilizations on the Hexi Corridor of that era. 🌲 Standing under the hundred-foot cliff, looking up at the halls embedded deep in the mountain, I am still deeply impressed by the wisdom and faith of the ancients. How many difficulties must have been overcome, day after day, to create such a sanctuary for meditation. Despite thousands of years of weathering, it still stands tall. 🌲 The most eye-catching among them is the Thirty-Three Heavens Grottoes. Seven levels up and down, with twenty-one grottoes in total. Tunnels connect each level, with winding corridors that only allow one person to pass through. The Buddhist scriptures say that in the center of Mount Sumeru is the Shakyamuni Heaven, and the four surrounding peaks each have eight heavens, inhabited by eight directional deities, making thirty-two heavens in total, along with the central Shakyamuni Heaven, they make up the 'Thirty-Three Heavens,' a place of entertainment for the gods. The ancients, with bold imagination, carved the Thirty-Three Heavens of Mati Temple on earth, hoping to transcend through practice and rejoice with the gods. 🌲 As I climbed up, looking through the cave entrance into the distance. Layers of mountains, clouds clinging to each other, the chill of autumn dyes the valley in shades of green and yellow. Houses are scattered at different heights, pines and cypresses form green waves, and any description seems so shallow in front of the beautiful scenery. But suddenly, I can understand why our ancestors chose to settle here during turbulent times. 🌲 When leaving, a gust of wind blew, the wind chimes under the eaves rang, as if echoing from the depths of history, resonating with my heart. At that moment, I was so moved that I didn't know what to do.