Leshan Giant Buddha

Leshan Giant Buddha, the biggest stone Buddha statue in the world at 233 feet (71 m) high. It is carved into a cliff face made of red sandstone in Leshan, Sichuan province, China.

The Buddha is situated at the confluence of the Min, Qingyi, and Dadu rivers, where numerous shipping accidents had occurred. In 713, a monk named Hai Tong decided to carve a Maitreya Buddha statue to watch over the river, a project that took 90 years, until 803, to fully complete. The resulting Buddha was immense: Its fingers are 27 feet (8.3 m) long and the shoulders are 92 feet (28 m) across, nearly the size of a basketball court. At 23 feet (7 m) long, the ears, made of wood covered in mud, were attached to the sculpture in a wonder of ancient engineering. The statue was originally sheltered by a 13-story wooden structure but this was destroyed during the Ming dynasty.

The Buddha did stop lives being lost to the rivers, if only because rocks from the construction filled in the riverbed. Over time, erosion and air pollution took their toll—plants and fungi are growing on parts of the statue and acid rain has caused the nose to turn black. However, repairs and preservation efforts are ongoing, with a major restoration project having been completed in 2019.

Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996, along with Mount Emei, the site is considered of exceptional cultural significance since it is the place where Buddhism first became established on Chinese territory . Indeed, the first Buddhist temples in China were built in this area in the first century of the Common Era.