Leshan and the Grand Buddha

We got our train tickets to Kunming- 4 tickets in soft sleeper. Then, we headed off for Leshan and the Grand Buddha. The Buddha, largest in the world, was 71 metres high and carved into a cliff face overlooking the confluence of the Dadu and Min Rivers. Dafo, as he’s called, has ears 7m long and you can have a picnic on the nail of his big toe.

The project was started in 713 AD by a Buddhist monk called Haitong who organized the funding and hired the workers. It took 90 years to complete, Haitong didn’t live to see its’ completion. He did gouge out his own eyes in an effort to protect funding from disappearing into the hands of officials.

To get the full effect, we hopped a local tour boat from Leshan that made its way for a full view of Dafo from the water. After a few minutes of hovering in front of the statue, the boat let us off on land. From there, it was a series of staircases, mostly up, to get to the head of the statue.

Along with 1000’s of Chinese tourists pushing their way along, we climbed down the narrow staircase opposite the head for the climb down his side. John didn’t mention that the rickety staircase was built into a sandstone hill and that the weight of all the tourists couldn’t possibly be good for its’ long term survival.

After heading all the way down, we had the uphill climb back to the parking lot to look forward to. As we huffed and puffed along, drenched with sweat, we watched the well-dressed Chinese tourists (many women in dresses and heels) walking along not breaking a sweat. We decided it is definitely the diet- or they simply don’t have sweat glands.
It felt so good to get back to our A/C taxi and head to the Holiday Inn. I’m sure they were impressed with the sweaty Caucasians entering their marble lobby. But, cold wine and burgers waited for us at the restaurant.