Shuilu Nunnery

This guide to Shuilu Nunnery in Xi'an starts in 1563, when Ming prince Zhu Huaijuan, grieving his mother, took over a crumbling temple on Wangshun Mountain and spent five years importing sculptors from Shanxi to fill it with painted clay figures, so dense that later visitors nicknamed the place the second Dunhuang. You'll hear how the Buddha's life unfolds across the walls in clay, with tiny gardens and pagodas tucked between painted robes. No photographs are allowed, so what you see has to stay in your head.