A restoration project is underway at the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, Henan Province in central China, to do away with illegal structures.

Illegal man-made structures include an amusement park, with a 28-meter-high and 158-meter-long cement dragon. The park is only some 200 meters away from the biggest statue of Buddha in Longmen. After careful planning, engineers demolished the dragon with explosives while keeping the nearby grotto intact.

About 34,000 square meters of man-made structures including shops, restaurants and factories have been removed from around the grottoes. The local government has injected more than 100 million yuan (about 12 million US dollars) in improving the environment surrounding the grottoes.

A hydraulic and seismology station are yet to be removed from near the grottoes. An entire village located on north of the grottoes will be removed before March 2000.

Longmen Grottoes began to be built in 493 BC, and more than 100, 000 stone-carving artifacts survive.