Dazu Rock Carvings: a day trip

The one Dazu site you must see: a U-shaped cliff about 500 m long, carved between 1174 and 1252 under the monk Zhao Zhifeng into a single planned Buddhist sequence — the Thousand-Hand Guanyin (830 surviving hands, regilded in a 2008-2015 restoration), the 31-metre reclining Buddha, the Wheel of Life, the hell scenes with their cartoon-strip cruelty. It is the last great programme of Chinese cave art and, since 1999, Chongqing's only World Cultural Heritage site. Entry is through the Dazu Rock Carvings Visitor Centre 3.5 km down the road, the only gate since November 2025: ticket check with face capture, a compulsory shuttle bus, the museum, then the cliff, and out through Baoding old street.

A late-Ming, early-Qing street of stone-carvers' shops and snack counters that was the pilgrims' road to the carvings for centuries, was walled out of the route when the scenic area was upgraded, and was written back in on 1 May 2025 after a township deputy spent three years lobbying the district council. Now every Baodingshan visitor walks it: out of the cliff at Boyong Fangong, down the old street, past the Xiangshan community car park where the downhill shuttle (the only way back to the visitor centre since November 2025) picks you up. Free, unfenced, and the one place on the hill to eat something other than a museum-café bun.

The quieter half of the Dazu day: a cliff about 500 m long 1.5 km north of the county town, carved niche by niche from 892 (late Tang) through the Song by hundreds of separate donors — the academy calls it 'a gallery of Tang and Song stone sculpture'. Where Baodingshan is one loud programme, Beishan is a row of small masterpieces: the Revolving Sutra Cabinet cave (No. 136), the 'beaded-rosary Guanyin', Song bodhisattvas with the faces of court ladies. Same combined ticket as Baodingshan, a tenth of the crowd, and a lit night session (trial-run in 2015, formally opened in September 2016) that is open again after summer 2026 maintenance.

Two things that are easy to miss in the rush to the cliff. The museum, opened on 13 June 2015, the day the Thousand-Hand Guanyin was unveiled, sits on the Baodingshan loop between the guide hall and Dafowan and is covered by the Baodingshan ticket: some 500 stone pieces from the 75 protected Dazu sites, the heads recovered after thefts, and the story of the eight-year Guanyin restoration — 40 minutes that make the cliff legible. The digital cinema is a different thing: two films (《天下大足》 and 《大足石刻》) on an 8K dome and a 4K widescreen at the visitor centre, ¥80 extra, seven screenings a day from 9:30, ten on holidays.

The building every Baodingshan visit now starts and ends in. Since 1 November 2025 the academy has closed every ticket window outside it and made the visitor centre on Baotang Avenue 'the sole entrance' to Baodingshan: ticket desks (the staffed one is where passports are handled), face-capture check-in, the digital cinema, car and coach parks, and the bay for the shuttle buses that carry you the 3.5 km up the road to the cliff — ¥22 return, ¥12 single, not included in any ticket. It is a transport fact, not a sight, but getting it wrong costs an hour.

The station you actually use in 2026: Dazu South (大足南), a stop on the Chengdu-Chongqing high-speed line 35 km south of the county town, about 30-40 minutes from Chongqing West or Shapingba. The 'Dazu Rock Carvings' station on the new central line is not due until 2027, and the old conventional 'Dazu' station next door is not where the fast trains stop. From Dazu South the academy's own route is bus 204 (63 minutes) into town, then bus 205 or the rock-carving tourist line towards the visitor centre (the district's stop lists end at the old gate, so ask for 游客中心) — two hours all in — or a taxi straight to the visitor centre. Book the return train before you go up the hill.

A hilltop 2 km south of the county town where the Southern Song carved its gods rather than its buddhas: four caves and three stelae from 1131-1162 around the Three Purities Cave (三清古洞), which the academy calls the most complete surviving Song image of the Daoist pantheon, plus the 1240s stele of He Guangzhen that historians use to reconstruct eastern Sichuan after the Mongol wars. ¥30, a daily cap of 4,003 that is never reached, and — good news for anyone who read the closure notice — the Three Purities upper hall and cave, fenced off for a timber-frame restoration from 8 December 2025, have reopened, four months early.

The last two of the five World Heritage hills, formally opened only on 20 July 2024 and 20 km from the town in opposite directions. Shimenshan (south-east, by Shima town) is the largest Buddhist-and-Daoist mixed group at Dazu — the Ten Holy Guanyin cave, the Jade Emperor niche with its life-size Thousand-Mile Eye and Wind-Following Ear — and reachable by buses 210/211. Shizhuanshan (south-west, Sanqu town) is China's earliest surviving large 'three teachings' site (1082-1096), with a Confucius-and-ten-disciples niche almost unknown in cave art, and reachable only by car. ¥30 each, caps of about a thousand a day, and not for a first visit.