Dazu District 大足区

History

Dazu was founded as a county in 758, the first year of the Tang Qianyuan era; the district government glosses the name as "great abundance, plenty of food and clothing". For almost 400 years, from the late Tang through the Song, it was the seat of Changzhou (昌州). Its begonias gave it the name "land of fragrant begonias" (海棠香国), from a saying that begonias everywhere else lack scent and only those of Dazu are fragrant.

In the 1960s, as part of the Third Front programme, the Sichuan Automobile Factory (四川汽车制造厂) was built here, and the district government credits it with New China's first heavy military off-road truck. Dazu hardware, known for knives, scissors and locks, goes back more than a thousand years by the district's account, and Dazu was named "hardware capital of western China" in 2005.

What to see

The Dazu Rock Carvings were begun in the early Tang and reached their height under the Song; they bring together Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist figures, with more than 50,000 statues. The five groups at Baodingshan (宝顶山), Beishan (北山), Nanshan (南山), Shimenshan (石门山) and Shizhuanshan (石篆山) are singled out by the district as the most distinctive, and all five have been open to visitors since July 2024. The carvings were inscribed on the World Heritage List on 4 December 1999 and are a 5A scenic area.

Baodingshan, north-east of the town, was laid out over more than 70 years by the Southern Song monk Zhao Zhifeng (赵智凤), born in Dazu in 1159. Its Great Buddha Bay (大佛湾) carvings cover more than 500 metres of cliff in a horseshoe-shaped hollow, and the site has a Thousand-Armed Guanyin spread over 88 square metres of rock, a 31-metre reclining Buddha and scenes of farm and family life. Longshui Lake (龙水湖) resort in the south-east, below the west slope of Bayue Mountain (巴岳山), takes in the Yulongshan national forest park and hot springs.

Setting and landscape

Dazu's land is mostly hills: low mountains in the south-east, shallow hills and flats in the centre and deeper hills in the west, with the town at 350 metres. Its rivers, including the Laixi (濑溪河), drain to the Tuo and Fu systems of the Yangtze. The Dazu black goat (大足黑山羊) is listed as an Important Agricultural Heritage System of China.

Highlights

• Dazu Rock Carvings 大足石刻: Tang to Song carvings with more than 50,000 statues, World Heritage since 1999
• Baodingshan carvings 宝顶山石刻: Southern Song site laid out by the monk Zhao Zhifeng over more than 70 years
• Longshui Lake resort 龙水湖旅游度假区: Lake resort below Bayue Mountain with a national forest park and hot springs
• Dazu hardware 大足五金: Knives, scissors and locks; Dazu named hardware capital of western China in 2005