Leshan Day Trip

As I mentioned earlier, we visited the giant Buddha in Leshan. The statue was carved right out of the side of the mountain, and there is a saying something like "the mountain is the budda, and the buddha is the mountain". It was actually hard to get the whole thing in one photo, because of how large it is. The big toe is close to 6 feet wide!

The statue is over 270 feet tall, so to get to the bottom you have to follow a very narrow staircase. It got a little clogged with people who weren't comfortable climbing that far down. This site seems to be a place of religious pilgrimage, so we did our best to be respectful and not act like tourists too much.

The giant Buddha is obviously the headliner, but there are other places to visit on the mountain. There are some temples as well as some modern replicas of other statues from around China. The climb up to Guanyin's Temple was incredibly steep but offered a great view.

Further along the cliffs, past the Great Buddha, are cave tombs dating to the Han period. I found that some of the most interesting relics were the "grave guardians," small statues set up near the mouth of the caves to protect the bodies of those buried there. Clearly, the guardians had not done the best job, because the caves had been fully excavated and made into a museum.
At the end of our walk through the complex, we came across this bridge. Giving us at least one quintessential photo from China.