A trip out to Dazu is a good way of filling a couple of days after you have booked your Yangtse Gorges boat ticket in Chongqing. The smallish town is pleasantly situated among fecund Sichuan countryside and the scenery, with its hardworking peasants cultivating every inch of land, provides a pleasant adjunct to visiting the grottoes themselves. The leisurely rural bus ride out from Chongqing was a nice introduction when we were there in 1994 but, since then, the Chengdu – Chongqing expressway has opened, and I cannot speak for it today (China is a new country every 10 years!).

There are several locations with grottoes but Baoding is recommended as the best and is easily reached by regular bus from Dazu town. The grottoes are set at the bottom of a crescent shaped cliff and are unusual in that they were apparently conceived of as a whole and were completed in the relatively short timescale of 70 years from 1179AD. They are therefore the most “modern” of the 4 WHS Buddhist cave/grottoes – the others at Yungang, Longmen and Mogao all belong to a much earlier era around 4th -6th centuries.

We are not connoisseurs of Chinese Buddhist art and cannot comment particularly on the stylistic differences between the sites but did find visiting Dazu a pleasant experience. There was the usual “foreigners price” and restrictions on photography (which we surreptitiously ignored as the attached photo demonstrates!). The sculptures are all brightly painted and 2 of the most noteworthy ones consist of a reclining Buddha and the Wheel of Life (photo).When we were there in August (a very hot month for the “furnace city of Chongqing!) the grottoes were pleasantly uncrowded (for China!)