Refreshed: August 2026
Seeing the Leshan Giant Buddha for the first time was awesome. I knew it was enormous before I arrived, but knowing that and actually seeing a 71-metre-high Buddha carved directly into a cliff face are two very different things.
It was difficult to comprehend the scale of it and, as I had done several times during my journey through China, I found myself wondering how on earth people had created something like this so long ago.
A Giant Beyond Imagination
The Leshan Giant Buddha sits at the meeting point of three rivers near Leshan in Sichuan Province, not far from Chengdu.
Carved into the red sandstone cliff, the seated Buddha is around 71 metres (233 feet) tall. Construction began during the Tang dynasty in the 8th century and took around 90 years to complete.
Looking at it, I found it almost impossible to imagine people undertaking a project on this scale more than 1,200 years ago.
Why Was the Buddha Built?
The project is traditionally associated with a Buddhist monk named Hai Tong.
The rivers below the cliff were dangerous, and boats were frequently caught in the turbulent waters. Hai Tong hoped that creating the Buddha would offer spiritual protection to those travelling on the rivers.
There is an interesting practical twist to the story. The enormous amount of stone removed from the cliff during construction was deposited into the river below. This is believed to have altered the currents and made the waters safer for boats.
So perhaps the Buddha really did help to calm the waters, although not quite in the way originally intended!
Boat or Stairs?
Our guide had warned us about the crowds and gave us two choices. We could take a boat and see the Buddha from the river, or we could use the stairway beside the cliff to make our way closer to it.
I chose the boat, and I was very happy with my decision.
From the river I could see the whole Buddha sitting majestically against the cliff, and it gave me a much better sense of its enormous scale. Looking up from the boat, the people making their way along the cliffside appeared tiny. That certainly put everything into perspective.
The Details Are Astonishing
The sheer size of the Buddha is impressive enough, but the details are extraordinary too. Its shoulders span around 28 metres, its ears are several metres long and hundreds of carefully carved hair curls cover its head.
What also fascinated me was that this wasn’t simply a giant sculpture carved into a mountain. Its creators designed a drainage system within the Buddha to channel rainwater away and help protect the stone from erosion.
More than twelve centuries later, it is still there. That alone is remarkable.
More Than a Tourist Attraction
The Leshan Giant Buddha forms part of the Mount Emei Scenic Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
For me, however, the fascination was imagining the people who had worked on this enormous project more than a thousand years ago without modern machinery, cranes or power tools.
I wondered how many people had worked on it, what it must have looked like while they were carving it and whether they could ever have imagined that people from all over the world would still be travelling to Leshan centuries later to see what they had created.
A Memory That Stayed With Me
China gave me several moments when I simply couldn’t comprehend how something had been achieved. I felt it at the Great Wall, looking across the Terracotta Army and again when I saw the Giant Buddha.
Photographs can show you what the Buddha looks like, but I don’t think they can really convey its enormous scale. Seeing the whole figure rising out of the cliff from the river was one of those experiences that stayed with me long after I left.
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Climbing the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu
Lol OMG! that’s huge, I’ll rather stick to the both too