Buddhist Statues

Dazu county lies just 80 km away from bustling Chongqing, but its Buddhist rock carvings and sculptures will take you back more than 800 years.

Amid the knobby hills of the county, are 50,000 magnificent Buddhist stone carvings and sculptures, dating back more than 800 years.Known as Dazu Rock Carvings, this UNESCO World Heritage site never fails to stun visitors.Scattered over 40 cliffs around Dazu, one of the best clusters of carvings is to be seen at Baoding Hill.In autumn, along the road to Baoding Hill, lush terraced rice paddies stand out against the hills.

About the year 1160, Zhao Zhifeng, a famous monk of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), chose Baoding Hill for its abundant rocks and oversaw the carving of Buddhist images to reflect his teachings of Tantric Buddhism.It took 70 years to complete the 10,000 carvings, three to 12 meters high, cleft from the rock face in a horseshoe-shaped cliff.

Most stone sculptures are concentrated in Dafowan (Big Buddha Crescent), the center of Baoding Hill. The chief object of veneration is the Thousand-Hand Guanyin (Buddhist Goddess of Mercy) covering some 88 square meters of the eastern cliff of Dafowan.

According to Buddhist lore, Guanyin was the third daughter of an ancient Indian king who fell ill and had to be treated with a medicine that called for the use of his daughters' hands and eyes as ingredients. While the two older daughters refused to comply, the younger princess sacrificed hers to cure the king.The Sakyamuni Buddha rewarded her for her filial piety with a gift of 1,000 hands and eyes.The nearly eight-meter-tall sculpture which actually has 1,007 arms and sits on a lotus-shaped plinth, is believed to embody boundless compassion