Now that WAS a big buddha

Well we went to see the big(gest in the world?) Buddha near Leshan yesterday. He is one impressive sculpture. I am staggered by the dedication of people when I visit sights such as this, or the cave temples near Ajanta and Elora in India, or the great cathedrals of Europe. The vision of the end, not achieved within the lifetime of either the workers or the people that fund the work. This took 90 years to carve. Some of the caves in India or the cathedrals in Europe took hundreds of years from start to completion. Generations carve or build, the first entire generation probably seeing very little progress toward the goal they believe in. Today we cannot see even a few years ahead to help our polluted world.

We headed from the hotel armed with the name of the bus station we were supposed to leave from and arrive back to in Chengdu. We got to Leshan with no problem. The bus station here in Chengdu is much more formal than we have seen before. You actually buy a ticket for a specific seat on a specific bus. In the other places, we have just arrived near the bus station and been greeted by frantic people yelling the names of their destinations to us to see if that is what we are looking for. If you want to go there, you are rushed onto the bus and the bus continues. One person drives the bus, another herds the passengers. The conductor leans out the door as you are leaving town, constantly yelling the name of the destination at passersby. If someone is interested, the conductor jumps off and hurries them onto the bus. We rushed out of Yangshou the other day with only a handful off passengers. By the time we got to Guilin the bus was full and had been full for quite some time. Some people got on and some got off but the bus remained full. I am not sure how the contracting works on those buses, but the people really seemed invested in getting passengers onto their bus.

When we got to the bus station in Leshan, we were immediately set upon by touts and taxi drivers. I tend to get really anti being herded in those situations. My instinct was to get away and walk in the direction we believed the buddha to be. Too many people trying to pull you in their direction. Just then a city bus stopped and the driver obviously wanted us to get on. We decided to do it and for 4 yuan (a total of 65 cents) we all got a ride. We were not sure where we were going, but the driver seemed to enjoy having us on his bus. He kept passing other buses, honking and smiling and pointing us out to the other drivers. We figured that the worst that could happen was we went for his whole circuit and ended up back where we started. There was no language between us except gestures. It turned out he knew what he was about and he dropped us off at the gate of the park where the big buddha is.

They have built a whole thing around it and imported lots of other buddha statues to put in caves. They have also carved the worlds largest reclining buddha (we saw another world's largest reclining buddha in Thailand, but that one was free standing and inside and this one was carved into a cliff face). You walk through a very pleasant park and up and down hills, through a huge temple to get to the actual big buddha. You can climb right down beside him on the cliff face. Luckily they have installed a hand rail on the outside of the set of stairs. Centuries ago when the stairs were put in, you would have to be REALLY stout of heart to use them.

When we got out of the park, we had plans to maybe stay overnight in Leshan. We also considered taking a boat ride to see the buddha from the river. At the gates, another bunch of people were trying to get us into their conveyances. One said we could catch a bus back to Chengdu. Faced with trying to find a hotel and a restaurant there or returning back to the hostel we like (with a restaurant the kids love in the lobby and a washing machine we can use), we chose to come back. The first person that tried to get us on her bus admitted her bus was going to the wrong bus station in Chengdu. We were then going to take a taxi into town when a woman from across the street told us her bus went to the right one. We waited in her shop (buying snacks and water of course) while we waited for the bus. We were assured by 3 seperate people that we were going to the right place. When we arrived at the wrong bus station in Chengdu, I still wasn't really surprised. It so happened that there was a Chinese American from Boston on the bus with her husband. She wasn't willing to sit down and take it and she insisted that the driver make good. After a heated debate, he put us in a minivan and sent us to the other place. We would have just given up ourselves, which is what I am sure happens every day.