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The Grand Buddha of Leshan: Leshan for anything else?

Posted on January 13, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

Is there anything else worth going to Leshan for except to see the Grand Buddha of Leshan? Given that I doubted it, I stopped off in the town on the way back to Chengdu after my painful enlightenment on Emei Shan to check out the largest stone Buddha in the world.

Dafo, or the Grand Buddha, is carved straight out of the cliff face overlooking the confluence of three rivers. It faces Mount Emei 35km back down the road, and at 71m tall, with ears 7m long and fingernails bigger than your average shutter-snapping tourist, I doubt he had trouble making the school basketball team.

Emei Shan: Snow, monkeys and broken ribs

Posted on January 11, 2011 by strippedpixel / 2 comment

At 3099m, Emei Shan is comfortably the tallest of China’s Four Sacred Mountains of Buddhism and is traditionally seen as the place of enlightenment of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra to whom many of the mountain’s temples and monuments are dedicated.

I arrived in the town of Baoguo at the foot of the mountain the night before my climb and stayed in one of the recommended hostels there. The following morning, after a breakfast that straddled the border between a hearty attempt at sustenance and sheer, ill-conceived gluttony, I set off.

Jiuzhaigou National Park

Posted on January 9, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992 and a World Biosphere Reserve since 1997, Jiuzhaigou National Park is not only one of the wonders of Sichuan, but arguably one of the wonders of China itself. With lakes so clear you can see the bottom tens of meters down and water iridescent with blues, greens and turquoise, all backed by forested slopes and snow-whitened peaks, its commonly attested other-worldliness is justified. During winter, snow covers the frozen lakes, and waterfalls that threw up spray not too many months before remain in silent inertia, giant icicles now hanging where water previously flowed down.

The Road to Jiuzhaigou

Posted on January 6, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

On the road to Jiuzhaigou we could have died a thousand times. From landslides to falling rocks, a head-on smash or fatal plunge, we could have been undone by either one on our ten hour ride through earthquake country from Chengdu.

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake had rendered the main expressway impassable, the only way now to reach the park being to use a much longer alternative route along narrow, potholed roads, passing evidence of the devastation that killed 68,000 people only two years previously. Bridges were fallen, landslides had covered the former road, burying cars just visible, crushed under rocks, and we still had to negotiate our own way through the wreckage.