The steep hills of Dazu are situated near Chongqing. On these hills are carved huge statues that reflect China’s three great belief systems, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. The statues number over fifty thousand, carved in seventy separate sites along with a hundred thousand characters. Altogether the hills are a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999.

The first carvings in Dazu were begun about 650 AD, but the hills took their present shape between the 9th century and the 13th. The largest statues are carved on Mounts Baoding and Beishan. Zhao Zhifeng, a famous monk, dedicated all his life to carving the Mount Baoding section.

The great statues of the Three Deities are truly marvelous, so beautifully carved that it seems impossible they could have been made with simple hand tools. The Standing Arhats are typical of Chinese sculptures and can be found in almost all palaces and temples of China. But the glory and size of the arhats in Dazu is truly something to behold. Statues of Sakyamuni Buddha or stories of Buddha repaying kindness stand beside those of the Goddess of Mercy with her thousand eyes and hands. One statue of Sakyamuni in particular is a must see; it’s the largest horizontally carved statue of him in China. As a shift from religious carvings, there are also some of a simple cow herd going about his simple life.

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