Places & destinations
ChinaPlaces & destinations
The Dazu Rock Carvings
Fifty thousand figures cut into the cliff, where Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism share the wall.
On the mapChongqing
Carved from the ninth to the thirteenth century, the Dazu grottoes mark the last great flowering of Chinese rock sculpture, seven centuries after Yungang and Longmen. Their particularity is doctrinal: the three teachings appear side by side, sometimes in the same niche, reflecting the religious synthesis of the Song. The style is also more narrative and popular, with scenes of daily life, moral parables and a thirty-one-metre reclining Buddha. The site has been World Heritage since 1999.