Tianfu Square

This guide to Tianfu Square in Chengdu starts with the marble statue overhead, its raised arm alone weighing about fourteen tons, and the effort of quarrying and hauling that stone nearly 750 kilometers from a hillside near Panzhihua in 1968, during the Cultural Revolution. It traces the ground beneath the statue back to 1371, when a Ming prince built a mansion so grand people called it the Imperial City, through centuries of rulers who rebuilt it after it burned down. Look up at the raised arm and consider the road once cut just to drag that stone downhill.