Big Foot Country

I had been so busy with business meetings in Chongqing and the run-up to the trip that I had not made plans for the Saturday I had planned on spending in the area. On the recommendation of a colleague however a friend and I booked a tour to the Dazu Stone Carvings Grotto, a UNESCO-listed cultural heritage site in the mountains about 100 miles west of Chongqing. Dazu literally means "big foot" but I doubt if there are any Sasquatch in the area - anymore.

We had checked out of the Marriott on Friday and moved to the Yangtze River Int'l Youth Hostel for a bit of flavor. That's where we booked the day-long tour for 200 rmb - about US$25. We were up in plenty of time for the 8 am pickup by a rickety van that picked up five other tourists (all Chinese) before depositing us at a tour company office under an overpass. There we piled into another rickety and cramped van that took off through the ground-hugging miasma that passes for air in Chongqing. About an hour out of the city smoke started coming out of a hole in the floor between my legs. We hadn't noticed the burning gear belt because the fumes smelled just like the surrounding atmosphere. We were beside the highway in the damp cold for a couple of hours while we waited for a mechanic to come replace the belt. We watched a lot of overloaded trucks lumber by - many of them holding cargoes of chickens and pigs piled on top of each other and squealing in agony. Animals in China are very unlucky animals.

When we finally reached Baoding where the finest stone carvings are we had a simple lunch in a freezing cafe beside a road where an oil slick was being burnt off. Flames poked up in several parts of the street.

At the Baoding Grotto we descended into a U-shaped valley that was lined with huge stone carvings - some as much as 40-feet tall. Here, in the mountains of Dazu County, there nest 50,000 beautiful religious stone carvings. These statues were carved over a 250-year period starting over 1000 years ago and show how Buddhism, an import from India, was Sinicized during the Tang and Song dynasties. There is also a heavy Confucian and Taoist nature to the carvings and show how the various philosophies mingled during the period.

We were at Dazu during the slow winter season. If it had been the spring or fall the grotto would have been jam-packed with Chinese tourists. As it were, we didn't see more than a few dozen visitors on the day we were there and we were the only foreigners we saw all day. Despite the relative quiet I would recommend visiting this amazing place when the weather is warmer and the trees are in bloom.