Hanging out with the World’s Biggest Buddha

Trip Start Jul 29, 2011
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Trip End Jan 29, 2012


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Where I stayed
My Apartment
(Leshan hotels)

Flag of China  , Sichuan,
Saturday, November 5, 2011

This was the first time I'd been out of Chengdu in a month, so it was great to see another part of China. The bus to Leshan took only 2 hours, though we were lucky to get one, because there seemed to be only one that day instead of hourly like we thought. Clint and I ended with the last spare seats in a minivan. When we got to Leshan, a man from Shanghai started talking to us and, like most Chinese people, asked for our phone numbers. I seriously wonder why people collect my number, because they never seem to call. Anyway, we then met up with Brooke and John and made our way to the biggest Buddha in the world, in Chinese – "Dafu". This Buddha is only the world's biggest because of missiles destroying the previous Buddha in Afghanistan - must have been a win for Chinese tourism.

The Buddha is calved into a mountainside and was created to calm the surging waters of the river that now lie at it’s feet
Dafu
Dafu
. The devoted say the Buddha did calm the river. However, more pragmatic people suggest that it was the stones that were tossed into the river, during the carving, eased the waters. The construction of the Buddha began in AD 713, and the completed Buddha is pretty impressive. The Buddha is 71 metres tall, has ears that stretch for 7 metres, shoulder span of 28 metres and big toes that are 8.5 metres long. I did feel pretty small. To leave the Buddha you had to line up for about an hour, a crowd which snaked its way down the mountain to the Buddha’s feet. When I looked down at the line below I happened to see Christian and Caroline from Norway smiling back up at me. We all lived in Beijing together in August, so it was good to catch up over lunch. We didn’t actually see a lot of Leshan, though we dud witness a live talent show in a park, which seem to be very popular throughout China. The population of Leshan is much lower than Chengdu, and it is far less polluted. It was really nice to walk by the river and in the park surrounding the Buddha and breath slightly less polluted air. From now on, I’m going to try and get out of Chengdu as much as I can.  
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