Leshan Giant Buddha and Oriental Park - China

Hey guys this is Mike with Wandering Wolf and we're at the Leshan Buddha. Leshan, a bustling city buried deep within the heart of mainland China. If you've come this far, like we have, chances are you're here to see the Leshan Giant Buddha. Sitting along the banks of the Menindadu rivers, this 233 foot masterpiece is simply stunning. It is 10 stories tall, making it the single largest Buddha statue in the world. And if it were standing, it would be as tall as the Statue of Liberty. But this massive marvel is far from the only one in the area. Oriental Buddha Park, as we discovered, spans hundreds of feet underground and holds over 3,000 individual statues, carvings, and depictions of the Buddha. It was an incredible discovery, but to tell you the whole story, we have to go back to the beginning, starting with a taxi ride and a ticket booth. We're trying to get ahead of all the tourist groups right now. The reasoning behind that is that the line to go down and see the Buddha is insanely long at times throughout the day. Which means you can be standing in the line for up to two to three hours. We don't really want to do that, so if we can avoid it, all is the better. Okay, fingers crossed. The Leshan Buddha here meets at the confluence of the three major rivers here in Leshan. The Buddhist monk that started building it died, but his followers completed it. And he originally built it to try to bless the waters here. Shipping vessels and stuff that used to come down these areas would have a hard time navigating the waters and crash and all sorts of stuff like that. Anyways, because of all the deposit from the rocks out to the water from building it, it actually did change the course of the river, making it easier for the ships to navigate the confluence here. So it actually worked. Getting into it now. It's a nice wet day. It's supposed to rain. The whole city's covered in a mist. Out this way it was all clear yesterday. It's really cool to see. This is all, it's like three major rivers right here. And a little island all meeting up. And it's muggy as hell, but still nice. There he is. Thankfully, it only took about 30 minutes of scanning a line to get to the bottom. I know, that sounds like a long time, and it is. But once we made it down, we were blown away by what we were seeing. Carved straight into the cliffside, Giant doesn't even begin to describe this thing. And we noticed some details up close that were pretty cool. There's a built-in drainage system around the head and chest, allowing rain to flow around and keeping the inner areas dry. It's been renovated several times over its 1200 year lifetime, and even used to have a giant wooden housing around it, until the Mongols tore it down in the 1340s. And so, having seen what we came here to see, we were all done. That's it. We were ready to head home. Or so we thought. Okay, so we knew there was a bunch of stuff going on here at the Leshan Buddha site. But we kind of stumbled on some stuff that we weren't expecting. Apparently, there's this whole other section that we're about to see, that we didn't even know about, about this giant lying down Buddha, and all these other statues in a cave. According to the signage, there's something like a thousand-some-odd depictions of the Buddha along this path, including the bigger ones. We got a little, a little treat with our meal today. So we're heading on in, or down, and we don't really know exactly what to expect other than the pictures we saw at the entrance here. And we paid 80 yuan on top of our tickets earlier. But just from the pictures, if it's anything like that, it looks like it's going to be totally worth it. Dude, around this corner. It was totally worth it. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. Right in front of us were more towering statues that welcomed us into the caves off to the side. Once we got in, we found several detailed carvings, each depicting some aspect of a Buddha's life. There were full scenes of mountains and clouds covering the entire walls sometimes. But the most amazing of these was the Thousand Hands Guan Yin. She's the Bodhisattva of Compassion. And each hand is posed slightly differently, or holding various objects, reaching out to those in need around the world. One of my personal favorites. The murals were simply stunning. But I have to admit, those weren't the only walls that interested us. And look how it, how it go. Like, it shifts. It's like they came in and went, you know what I mean? Yeah, they did it in layers almost. And every spacing is exactly the same. And these are the same kind of cuts that you see all over the world in caves and stonework. I just really want to get this on film because I want to be able to compare it. Like, I'll put my hand on here. I want to be able to compare it to other sites that we go when we travel the world, you know? And especially in the other caves that are just south of Shanghai, where we're going to see exactly those markings. And I mean, it has to be some sort of machine to be that regular, right? Right. And I've already seen stuff like this in South America. And like, this is all amazing. Don't get me wrong. I am absolutely blown away by the carvings and the structures and stuff. But everybody walks right past this. And they do it everywhere in the world, no matter what continent you're on. When you see stuff like this, people just walk by and they don't pay any attention. But to get this level of perfect spacing, this isn't chiseled. Now, granted, I'm not like a rock worker or a geologist. It's hard to believe that this was done by hand for it to be this regular. Yeah. And look at the spacing. So you've got these spacings in these lines here. But then on top of that, you've got spacing here, here, here. Like somebody went down it with a saw or something, you know? And they were just like, and then they came back this way. You know what I mean? And it's all the exact same spacing. That is pretty wild. The size and scale of these statues is amazing. Some of these are just enormous. And there are dozens of them all over the park. I can't even imagine the amount of time that it took to create these. Let's do this and we'll check that map to figure out what we do next. Because there's still stuff out here to shoot. Look at that. All these amazing carvings and... Whoa. Just... I don't think I've ever seen anything like... It's so extensive in terms of the area of this park. And so incredibly well preserved. I mean, we're just in a hollowed out cave of statues that are like 30, 40 feet high. Carved in incredible detail straight out of the rock. It's... And it keeps going. It just keeps going. A lot of this we're going to have to tell you about in post. Because we didn't even realize this was here. Yeah, it's funny. We did a month's worth of research before we came here. And had no clue this was here. Not an idea. Holy crap, dude. This, I'm not even looking at it fully yet. But just be prepared to be amazed. This is incredible. That's insane, man. I don't know, maybe half the size of the other Buddha. But like, look at the detail on it. And then it's in a cave. And look, they carved out a hole up top to shine light on it. It's very impressive. Dizzying. Wow. So by this point, we'd seen some impressive things. But nothing could have prepared us for this next chamber. Colossal walls lined up both sides with hundreds, if not thousands, of individual and intricate figures stretching on and on for what felt like miles. Check out down there. You ever seen anything like this? No, never. Never, ever, ever. This is the Wheel of Samsara, a representation of the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation. But even it was still only one of many different incredible depictions in this room. This cave system is massive, too. What? I mean, we just keep coming upon, like, amazing structure after amazing structure. And these things are just enormous. What? It's hard to describe how, like, massive this, uh, all of these things are. But it's kind of dizzying standing up close to them. And this is all inside of a cave system. Wow. That's really cool, man. What a find. So cool. Such, I mean, there's so much importance here. And you can really feel it just with every square inch of this place. Yeah, it's really been amazing. But Oriental Buddha Park still had one last surprise left in store for us. It was hard to see what we were looking for on foot. Thankfully, we'd come prepared for just such an occasion. This is the incredible Sleeping Buddha. Stretching out across 500 feet of cliffside and tucked in nicely by the trees surrounding it. This gargantuan statue is also carved straight out of the mountain. The head alone is over 50 feet tall and has individually spiraled curls just like the giant Buddha. To us, this statue perfectly captured the peaceful nature of Leshan, this park, and everything we had seen that day. One thing about a lot of these places you got to keep in mind is if you're walking down or walking up, you're going to have to come back the same way. And there's a lot of stairs in China. So while most of the places are pretty easy to do in a day or something, even for somebody who's not in like peak physical condition, if you're doing, if you have as tight of a schedule as we do, I mean, you're walking like, we've been averaging, I think, between, you know, for like the first week we were doing like 15 miles a day, and most of all of that was uphill climbing. So just be prepared for that if you have a packed schedule. Honestly, if you're vacationing, my recommendation would be to stay in one place for, you know, four or five days. Leshan could easily be a week-long trip here, I think. Hey, so we're just finishing up here. We started with Leshan Buddha and found this whole other part of the park. Absolutely would recommend. Truly amazing. We've spent, I don't know how many hours here today, and it's probably one of the coolest places that I've ever been to. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Make sure to hit subscribe and like down at the bottom. It really helps us out a lot, and take care and travel safe.