마제 생태문화 관광구

The Mati Ecological Cultural Tourism Area, centered on Mati Temple, is a sprawling complex of cave temples and monastic buildings set into the cliffs of the Qilian Mountains in Sunan Yugur Autonomous County, south of Zhangye. Combining grottoes, Tibetan and Han Chinese Buddhist architecture, and high-altitude mountain scenery, the site is one of the more distinctive cultural landscapes in this part of the Hexi Corridor and a useful counterpoint to the painted Danxia hills for which Zhangye is best known.

The caves at Mati Temple were carved into the cliff face beginning in the Northern Liang period, and they contain statues, murals, and devotional chambers accumulated over many centuries, with later structures added across multiple dynasties. The complex is unusual in combining both Han Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist elements within a single site, with separate temples and cave clusters reflecting each tradition, and the layered architecture climbing the cliff gives the complex its distinctive stacked silhouette against the surrounding peaks.

According to local tradition, the temple takes its name from a hoofprint believed to belong to a heavenly horse, preserved inside one of the caves and treated as a sacred relic, and the surrounding site includes scattered historical relics, including Yuan dynasty murals and statuary accumulated across the centuries of the complex's use. Beyond the religious architecture, the wider scenic area includes alpine meadows, forested slopes, and the landscapes associated with the upper Qilian range, making the visit as much about the setting as the architecture.

For a Zhangye itinerary, Mati Temple works well as a day trip from the city, combining the grotto architecture with the higher-altitude scenery of the Qilian foothills and the cultural context of the Yugur minority community native to this county. It rewards visitors who have an extra day to spend beyond the headline Danxia sites.