The biggest Buddha in China

Today we saw the biggest Buddha in China. He's 71 meters tall and made out of stone, making him the biggest stone buddha in the world.

He was pretty big. (You can click on the photos to see them even bigger in this blog)

His name is the Leshan Giant Buddha. He lives in Leshan at the confluence of the Qingyi, Dadu, and Min rivers. Leshan means "Happy Mountain." He was built from 713-803 after a series of long floods devastated the region. A monk named Haitong, who lived in a little cave at the top of the Buddha directed the construction. No more floods after that. Here is a close up of his ear

Pretty big, no? Here is a closeup of his hand. He's made out of red sandstone, so it's pretty miraculous that he's lasted this long without eroding.

The calm of the Buddha:

Here's one of the Buddha's buddies

Here's a tower made out of the ashes of the 13 monks who built the Buddha:

Here's an animated gif I made of the Buddha:

To see the Buddha we had to take a boat, because he's too big to see up close. The rivers were very swift, so the only way to get a good picture of the Buddha was to get your camera ready as the boat drifted by then click click click click click! Then the boat turned around and made another pass, then click click click click click! It was sort of like fighting a boss in a 1st person shooter where you only get a couple seconds at a time to shoot the boss before the camera angle changes.

We were duking it out with another boatful of tourists who were also trying to edge in for a good angle at Buddha. We managed to stay in front of their boat the entire time! Although they did give us a couple good bumps with their boat. Heres the other boat, driving away in the shame of defeat:

The boat driver was very skilled at driving the boat. After a couple passes, he managed to get the boat at about the same speed as the river so we more or less stayed in just the right place for the front of the boat to have a perfect angle of the Buddha and for the rest of the boat to have a lousy angle. If you wanted to go on the front of the boat though, you had to shell out an extra 20 yuan per person. You got the added bonus of them telling you how to hold your hand so it looked like you were holding the Buddha in a forced perspective shot:

The ladies in charge of the boat wore these very frilly hats

The folks in charge of the boat were so concerned with making money that they didn't care that we were hanging up river flags on the side of the boat. I don't think they even noticed. The river flags were beautiful.

I got a cool shot of a guy throwing a net:

On the whole, everyone had a good time on the boat

Well, my battery's just about to die and we're almost back to Chengdu, so I'll have to tell you about going up to the temple at the top of the giant Buddha next time.

For now,

-Ollie

PS- I said "Today we visited the biggest Buddha in China" in the beginning. It's not today anymore, that was yesterday.