It may seem unlikely that one of China's most important and revealing cultural sites would be located on the dusty edge of the Gobi Desert, far from traditional centers of power and signature tourist attractions like the Terracotta Warriors and Forbidden City. But China's is a story of travel, transformation and adaptation as much as it is one of continuity and Confucian stability, and few places make this clearer than the Silk Road's amazing Mogao Caves (Mogao Ku).

Here, over 1,600 years ago, in over 1,000 caves scattered throughout the rocky desert near modern-day Dunhuang, Buddhist monks traveling east from India and Tibet settled, establishing, along with China's first Buddhist monasteries, a revered tradition of filling the area's arid caves with stunning paintings and sculptures.

Today, only some of the caves are open to the public, as conservation and restoration work is under way. Expect to be able to tour about 10-12 caves in a single day for the price of admission (RMB 120 base, with visits to additional individual caves running up to RMB 500).

Legend has it that a monk named Lie Zun started it all in 366 AD. Whether Lie is the father of the caves or not, it is unquestioned that by the fourth century AD, Mogao had become the epicenter of Buddhism's wildfire spread throughout China. 

By the time of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-581 AD), monks were creating brightly painted terracotta Buddhas in a distinctly Indian style, featuring figures with long noses and curly hair. By the mid-sixth century, Chinese influence began to predominate, with paintings featuring flatter figures, landscapes and narrative scenes depicting episodes from Buddhist lore.

The Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-906) dynasties saw an increase in the number of larger devotional images of bodhisattvas and Buddha, often enthroned and robed in a style more familiar to students of classical Chinese art. 

They also grew in size, with the largest of the Tang Buddha statues checking in at a lofty 34 meters, and imperial grandeur and symbolism—the giant Buddha is depicted wearing the emperor's dragon robe, linking the recently arrived religion to the very center of Chinese political and military power.

The Tang period also produced fantastic murals illustrating passages of the Buddhist sutras in an impressive range of styles that represent the richness of Chinese art at the height of the Tang Dynasty. 

After the Tang fell, a period of relative turmoil set in, and though new art was created in a number of caves, the contributions of the Five Dynasties, Song, Western Xia and Yuan Dynasty generally fail to match the splendor of Tang work. 

Nonetheless, these periods generated some fascinating changes, including the infusion of a heavily Tibetan style featuring Tantric and Lamaist images, altars and mandalas, a number of which are sexually explicit (and often off-limits to visitors, at least to those without sufficiently deep pockets and a bit of patience for wrangling with guides).