This month, let's pay a visit to China. Dazu is located in southeast Sichuan, about 168 miles east of Chengdu. Thousands of stone figures can be found here, carved into the cliff faces at multiple sites in the hills around the town.

Begun in 650 CE, during the Tang dynasty, construction on the Dazu sites was continued during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and the Qing dynasty (1616-1911). Each era has its own identifying style and both secular and religious subjects are depicted in the grottoes.

The earliest group of carvings at Beishan consists of 300 niches with 10,000 statues, primarily Buddhas and Bodhisatvas. Baodingshan, around 800 years old, has thirteen groups of carvings with over 10,000 mainly Buddhist figures which are arranged to tell a story. Taoism is represented in the carvings at Nanshan, and Shizhuanshan is most notable for the rare coexistence of figures from Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Shimenshan is remarkable for the particularly lifelike qualities of the statues to be found there.

In 1999, the rock carvings around Dazu became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and today the area attracts tourists from all over the world.