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Spelunking in Mati Temple

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I’ve seen a lot of amazing temples in my time in China. One of the most amazing was the Hanging Monastery in Datong, China. It’s built on the side of a sheer cliff face, and is holding up thanks to a few beams and walkways.
But the Hanging Monastery has now been ousted from the number one spot, and a new temple took it’s place as my favorite: the Mati Temple in Zhangye.

It’s because the Hanging Monastery hangs. It’s built on the outside of the cliff face, with a few walkways dug slightly into the temple. But not the Mati Temple. It is built almost entirely inside the mountain. And you get to walk, and crawl, and scramble through the narrow passageways to explore it.

Looks impressive from the outside, but squeezing through the rough stairwells, and finding secret rooms in the cliff face makes it way more fun.
Looks impressive from the outside, but squeezing through the rough stairwells, and finding secret rooms in the cliff face makes it way more fun. You can climb all the way up to the tippy-top room you can see in the picture.

No one knows when exactly it was built though based on the style of art, it was probably 5th or 6th century. The name, translated, means Horse’s Hoof Temple because there is a hoof print of a magical horse embedded in the floor of one of the rooms.

You need to squeeze through small passages carved into the rock face.
You enter the cliff by the small door on the bottom right, and proceed to climb a narrow, and incredibly steep set of stairs and passages in the cliff side. At some point they had workers who had to help lift you up because the stairs were so steep.
You enter the cliff by the small door on the bottom right, and proceed to climb a narrow, and incredibly steep set of stairs and passages in the cliff side. At some point they had workers who had to help lift you up because the stairs were so steep.
There are several areas or interest and you need a car to explore them all. This was a temple dedicated to a prince and the temple actually goes right through the center of the small mountain. Also, you can see what a gorgeous area it was.
This area is a well-known Buddhist area and the whole temple had a very Tibeaten buddhist feeling to it, with the colorful flags draped over everything, and a lot of writing in the Tibetan script instead of Chinese.
You enter the cliff by the small door on the bottom right, and proceed to climb a narrow, and incredibly steep set of stairs and passages in the cliff side. At some point they had workers who had to help lift you up because the stairs were so steep.

Travel Tips: It’s located about 65km away from the city of Zhangye, so you need to hire a car. At my hostel, they arranged a shared car/van for 50rmb per person. Of course the taxi drivers in the city (with official blue uniforms) are used to driving tourists there and will wait for you and shuttle you around, though for a considerably higher price. Taxi drivers meet each arriving train and wave brochures around trying to sell their services.
I went during the peak of the summer travel season and the place was relatively empty. No giant tour buses or big groups which I found refreshing. Though some of the narrow passages and stairwells in the mountain were monitored because they were too small for two people pass each other so they had to control the foot traffic.

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