10th February, 2001.
Dazu Buddhas: Sleeping Buddha Entering Nirvana: Carvings Of Dragon's Mouth, Life Of Herdsman: Sound Of Water Trickling From Hill: First Trading In China By Writer
August, 1987.
The Dazu Buddhas we visited were at Baoding Hill about 9 miles from the town. The journey to the Dazu Buddhas was through countryside often revealing wonderful views of paddy fields in the valleys. When we arrived at the plain ground coach park, we were immediately greeted by local people of all ages, trying to persuade us to buy their packs of postcards or guide brochures and maps. One young boy, of about ten years of age, followed us for almost all the time we were at the site. When we were eventually on the path in front of the Rock Carvings, I offered to buy a set of postcards from him, on the condition that he would buy them back at half the price.
 After much consultation with his companions, he agreed to do so, and thus for the first time, I did some trading in China !
The Buddha Crescent, the niches and small caves, containing thousands of statues of various sizes, were completed in the year 1249. The work took about 70 years to complete and was directed by a Song Dynasty monk named Zhao Zhifeng. Besides the Buddha statues, there are also carvings of mountains, flowers and trees, and of ordinary people. A mother gives birth, and a son gets married. The site has a spiritual atmosphere rather than a religious one.
The largest carving is that of the sleeping Buddha entering the state of Nirvana, but only the upper part of the body is visible, and this is about 100 feet long and 20 feet high, a remarkable piece of workmanship. The Sleeping Buddha dwarfed all the other statues, and at the time we were there, was bathed in the warm morning sunlight.
The rock face with its carved scenes towered up above us, and water dripped from the overhang. The sound of trickling water was quite distinct in many places, perhaps seeping from the hills behind the grotto, or the gathering of condensation, but there was water issuing out of the mouth of a dragon's head, also carved in the rock.
 The painted carvings in the upper part of the grotto, which had been afforded some protection from the sunlight by the overhang, were brightly colored, and
 showed no sign of fading but even without color the carvings would have still been inspiring. Everyday life was also a feature of the carvings, and a group of ten scenes showed the life of a common herdsman, suggesting that Buddhism was not some remote religious belief, but rather a spiritual way of living one's time in this world, in preparation for the next.
On leaving the site and walking back up the steep path, we were again approached by local people, as soon as we came into view. The youngest "salesman" was a boy of about 3 or 4 years old. He had started to learn his trading skills quite early.
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