Shijingsi

This guide to Shijingsi in Chengdu tells how a magistrate named Song Sixian, moved by a visit to Tiancheng Temple in 1767, shipped in prized slate from Anhui and set stonemasons to carve the entire Diamond Sutra into thirty-two stone tablets, work so demanding the temple renamed itself in their honor. It follows the tablets through the centuries after, as all but one had vanished by the 1820s and monks had to raise money for replacements just to keep the set whole. Stand in these halls and you're standing inside the ambition of stonecutters who worked a sacred text into permanent rock.