Exploring the artistic treasures of the Yulin Caves

The Chinese video game “Black Myth: Wukong” has taken the world by storm, but do you know where the earliest images of Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, are located? In the Yulin Caves in Guazhou County, northwest China’s Gansu Province, two murals from the Western Xia Dynasty (1038-1227) are believed to contain two of the earliest depictions of the famous monkey monk, appearing at least 300 years before Wu Cheng’en’s classic novel “Journey to the West.”

Carved into the steep cliffs along the Yulin River Gorge, the Yulin Caves house over 5,200 square meters of murals and more than 270 painted sculptures spread across 43 caves. These caves belong to the same artistic complex as the renowned Mogao Caves in Dunhuang.