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Facelift of tallest Buddha statue
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CHINA has launched its largest-ever facelift of the world's tallest Buddha statue in Leshan, a city in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
A dozen workers on Monday climbed up the 1,280-year-old Buddha to start the repairs, with each worker holding a plastic barrel filled with calcareous clay and a safety rope bound at the waist.
The renovation project is to cost an estimated 250 million yuan (US$30 million), including US$2 million in World Bank loans.
Repairs on the giant Buddha statue have been carried out on numerous occasions since ancient times. However, all the previous repair efforts were done by individuals and on a smaller scale. Since New China was founded in 1949, thorough repair work on the Buddha statue has been conducted once every 10 years. The annual maintenance cost of the Buddha statue exceeds two million yuan, said Li Mingquan, director of the Leshan City Tourism Bureau.
The current renovations will be conducted strictly in accordance with the law on protecting cultural relics and the international pact on world heritage protection. Modern techniques and new materials will be used, said Huang Xueqian, director of the Leshan City Cultural Relics Administration.
The Leshan Buddha statue, a sitting Maitreya on a fault cliff, is 72 metres in height and 28 metres in width. It is 18 metres taller than the standing Buddha statue at Bamian Valley, Afghanistan, once thought to be the tallest of its kind in the world. Over 100 people can sit on the 8.5-meter-tall flat and smooth instep of the Buddha statue.
Carving of the Buddha began in 713AD and was completed in 803, in the prosperous period of the Tang Dynasty. The Body of the Buddha has a water drainage system to prevent erosion.
The statue, which was included on World Cultural Heritage list in 1996, has suffered weathering from the wind, water, acid rain and damage from visitors for years. Coiled buns on the head of the statue have fallen down and the face has darkened.
The repair project will be carried out in two stages: the first set for April and the second due at the end of this year. Workers will clean up the body of the statue, piece up the cracks, and install drainage devices and protection facilities against wind and water.
In order to find the most suitable material to mend the cracks on the statue, experts put several hundred blocks made from different materials beside the statue, and select one kind which had the least erosion.
The selected material, in the same colour of the statue, is a mixture of lime, carbon residue and hemp.
China's cultural heritage administration announced that it will invite international bidding for the ongoing facelift.
The purpose is to seek the most advanced technology and first-class protection for this item of the world's most precious cultural heritage. The bidding will be mainly for the third phase of the protection project, namely, a new 300-metre plank road, a comprehensive monitoring system of the condition of the statue, and the daily management, expansion and protection of the foundation of the statue.
(SD-Agencies)
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