Ziyang is in Sichuan, in Southwest China.
Home › Destinations › Sichuan › Ziyang
Sichuan · City Guide
Ziyang, Where a Hundred Thousand Carvings Sit in Farmland.
Overview
Why Go
Anyue County holds roughly 100,000 Tang and Song figures cut into cliffs and boulders across more than 200 separate sites. Many are in open farmland with a path and a caretaker rather than a gate and a line.
The Purple Bamboo Guanyin at Piluodong is a three-metre seated figure with one knee drawn up and the robe carved loose over it. The nickname Eastern Venus is a local one and it is how the county advertises itself.
The Dazu carvings, a World Heritage site, are about 100 kilometres east in Chongqing and are mostly later work. Anyue belongs to the same Sichuan cliff-carving tradition and sees a small fraction of the visitors.
Wofoyuan keeps a reclining Buddha over 20 metres long, and in the caves beside it hundreds of thousands of characters of Tang sutra text carved straight into the rock. It is one of the larger such stone libraries anywhere.
Anyue grows the large majority of China's lemons, on hillsides that were planted from a single introduced tree in the early twentieth century. Picking runs from autumn into winter and the county smells of it.
See
The site holding the Purple Bamboo Guanyin along with a large Song relief of hell scenes under a rock overhang. It is about 40 kilometres from Anyue town on a country road. Allow an hour on site.
A reclining Buddha cut horizontally into the cliff above a valley, with the sutra caves strung along the rock face beside it. The sutra caves are usually locked; the caretaker opens them on request.
A particularly accessible of the Anyue sites, a wooded park on the edge of the county town with three tall Tang figures and rows of Song niches. Start here if visitors just have half a day in the county.
A Ming temple built around a stone pavilion that was carved to imitate timber joinery, itself standing inside a wooden hall. A building inside a building, put up over a monk's tomb. Half an hour, and few people.
A seated Buddha over 20 metres high cut into the hillside in Yanjiang District, close enough to the city to reach without a full day out. The head is Tang work; the lower body was finished much later.
The farmhouse in Lezhi County where Chen Yi was born in 1901, kept as it was with a museum built beside it. He was mayor of Shanghai and then foreign minister. Signage is mostly in Chinese.
On the Map
Approximate locations of the attractions above, across Ziyang.
Eat
Eureka lemons grown across the county and sold fresh, dried in slices, pressed into juice and cooked into everything from tea to braised fish. Roadside stands run through the autumn picking season at prices no city matches.
Broad beans fermented with chilli in open jars at Linjiangsi, sweeter and finer-textured than the Pixian paste many Sichuan kitchens use. It is eaten straight with rice as often as it is cooked with.
Pork cut thin, marinated and grilled over charcoal at night stalls through Lezhi County. It goes heavier on cumin than many Sichuan grilling and the stalls run late. Order by the handful of skewers.
A local pig breed raised in Yanjiang, fatter through the belly than the industrial crosses, which is why twice-cooked pork made with it curls properly in the wok. Restaurants in the district put the breed on the menu.
Do
The carving sites are 20 to 50 kilometres apart on county roads with almost no buses between them. A driver for a day covers three or four; without one visitors will manage one. Arrange it in Anyue town.
At Wofoyuan the sutra caves sit behind locked grilles and are not part of the standard walk. The caretaker will open them if asked. Bring a torch; the carving is shallow and the caves are dark.
Piluodong faces so that the low morning sun rakes across the drapery, which is the whole argument for the carving. By midday it flattens out. Photography without flash is allowed.
Growers sell at the row end through autumn and winter, by the crate rather than the piece. They also sell the dried slices, which travel and which much of the county drinks as tea.
When
Mild and green, with rape blossom between the orchards in March and comfortable weather for the long county drives. One of the two good windows.
Hot and humid with afternoon storms, and the country roads to the carving sites get slippery. The cliff sites give no shade at midday.
Dry, clear and the start of the lemon picking, which is when the county is at its especially worth seeing. The ideal light on the carvings.
Grey and damp but rarely freezing, lemons still coming in, and the sites almost empty. Bring warm layers for the unheated halls.
Explore More
Ziyang is in Sichuan, in Southwest China.
Related
Share the travel dates and interests, and PreeChina's local team will design a route that fits.
Plan My Trip to ZiyangSee Private Tour Prices