Leshan and the Buddha

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Communication and Coincidence.

We left Chengdu for Leshan and the Giant Buddha on the morning of 22nd. We arrived at one of the many Chengdu Bus Stations by taxi and Richard booked us tickets. We were somewhat surprised to find ourselves on a 7 seater mini bus and not your usual Chinese coach for the 2 hour journey. It became clear very quickly to the other passengers that neither of us spoke Mandarin so we settled down to a peaceful morning. It didn’t take Richard long to work out that one of the guys spoke Japanese so for the next 2 hours we enjoyed conversations going from Mandarin to Japanese to English and back and forward again. After a little while the guy sitting in front of us explained to our now Japanese interpreter that he had in fact seen us twice the day before and had helped Richard to find a temple for us…1.5 billion or so people and we strike the same guy 3 times.

The Leshan Buddha is truly awesome; its magnitude is like many things in China, astounding. The park and temples within it were also very beautiful and well worth the extra few hours we spent their. The walk down to the Buddha’s base is not at all scary given we were moving incredibly slowly due to the people crush going on. We caused a couple of traffic jams by taking photos and had a few pusher in trying to squeeze past the rather large white boys on a very narrow track only to see them take a couple of photos at the bottom and then disappear back up the hill. Although there has been quite a bit of restoration work performed on the Buddha and there is a fair amount of concrete around it is just the magnitude of him which is so inspiring. From memory it is something like 77m tall…one heck of a lot of Buddha.

The rest of the park is relatively under visited and exploring it gave us a chance to escape the tour parties and general hustle and bustle of being a tourist in China. It also introduced us to a local phenomenon of wanting to have photos taken with us. Now with Richard I can understand but with me…please! Once we completed our Temple Tour we caught a taxi to the long distance bus station to continue onto the Teddy Bear hotel at Emei Shan.

China continues to amaze me. I sold China short, I am guilty of thinking that I was arriving into a third world country where communication and travel would be difficult and people would view us with suspicion. The reality in what we have experience to date could not be further from what I expected. Buying train tickets at Leshan typifies the Chinese attitude to travelers. Firstly signage is in both Mandarin and English. Secondly we bought tickets to Emei Shan only to find a bus going to Baogau which is where our hotel is located. We explained by pointing the bus we wanted and our tickets were instantly changed for us saving us a further bus or taxi journey. All done with a smile and a caring attitude.

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Photos

The Giant Buddha
The Giant Budda at Leshan was built during the Tang Dynasty around 713AD and took 90 years to complete. He stands 71 metres tall

This way
One of the great things we have experienced across China has been signage has been in both Mandarin and English, perphas both Australia and New Zealand could learn from this.

The Ears
Not sure if you can trust the Wiki but if you can the ears are made of wood...

The Stairs
In December 1996 the site was included in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites

Fingers
The fingers are approximately 3 metres long