This is one of those sites that fully deserve their World Heritage status. And it all starts out so inconspicuously: the main site (Baoding) is located 12 km outside of Dazu town. A local bus gets you there for 3 Yuan. It really is a trip into the heart of the Chinese countryside: grandparents showing off their grandchildren, people walking by with huge loads of agricultural produce on their backs and a pleasant green hilly landscape.

The abundance of souvenir stalls near the entrance shows that the site itself sees a fair number of visitors in the high season. During my visit on a Thursday in September, it was relatively quiet, though. The Baoding grotto is made up of 13 groups of stone carving figures, totaling nearly 10,000 cliffside figures. That really is a lot. You don't know where to look first; it felt like one big chocolate cake. Most of the figures are painted brightly. The sculptures are protected from the elements by protruding rock. Fortunately, they have made benches in front of the carvings so you can just sit and gaze.

The sculptures did remind me a lot of European medieval paintings or tapestries. It's really a different side of Buddhism than what I've seen before. Many of the carvings depict scenes of daily life and show religious rules for behavior. They feature religious figures but also include monarchs, officials and ordinary people. Hell is represented rather harshly, showing several ways of torture in detail.