Guangyuan - Thousand Buddha Cliff

The location of Guangyuan City, in North Sichuan, served as an ancient crossroads for traders. Here routes led west to Lanzhou and the Yellow River, East to Chongqing and the Yangtze, north to the ancient capital of Xi’an and south onto the Sichuan Plain and Chengdu. Today one of the most striking monuments to this ancient importance is the Thousand Buddha Cliff – located just four kilometres outside the main city centre. The site, a cliffside covered in recessed grottos full of buddha carvings, in is even more fascinating if you consider that the earliest Buddhas date from the Tang Dynasty, which makes them around 1,400 years old. The complex now spans 420 metres in length but, originally twice the size, was half destroyed, in the 1930’s, by construction of a new main-road to Xi’an. Stairways lead you up to view the carvings – many of which are still coloured – and there is on-going conservation work to further conserve and protect this historic site.

Guangyuan is now on the high-speed rail link between Chengdu and Xi’an – the ride from Chengdu East train station takes under two hours, which makes for a viable day visit.