Leshan Giant Buddha
Colossal cliffside Buddha carved above a turbulent river confluence, watching over sailors below.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Leshan Giant Buddha near Chengdu asks how far you would go to prove you were telling the truth, and follows the monk Haitong, who in 713 decided the only way to calm the turbulent river confluence below this cliff was to carve a colossal Buddha into the rock. You'll hear how he spent twenty years begging coin by coin for the project, and what he did when local officials tried to seize the funds he had raised. The carving outlived him unfinished, picked up decades later by a governor named Wei Gao.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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