Chinese Temple Scenes

16. Giant Buddha of Leshan

The city of Leshan (Low San) has a large statue of Buddha carved out of solid rock. It is several hundred feet high. This is his head. Can you imagine how long it took to carve this great statue? There is grass growing on his head. You can get a scale of how large it is by the size of the people in the back. This is a culture that values great works of art. We visited here several times. The Buddha is 71 meters high. It is the biggest Buddha statue in the world. It was built from 713 to 803, taking some 90 years in the making. It was engineered by a Buddhist monk called Haitong, who organized funding and hired workers. His ears are 7 meters long and a picnic could be held on the nail of his big toe which is 1.5 meters -- the toes itself is 8.5 meters long. You can walk down to the bottom on perilous steps. You can also take a tour boat from the Leshan pier, across from the Taoyuan Hotel.