Within the region around Chongqing, Dazu is famous for its historical
rock carvings; among the Dazu rock carvings, the Southern Song
sculptures of Baodingshan are the best preserved; and in the middle of
the Baodingshan picture program, a hellish panorama stretches for twenty
meters along the thirteen-meter-high cliff face. A local tantric
Buddhist by the name of Zhao Zhifeng (b. 1159) devoted his life to this
elaborate monument which is now a World Heritage Site, and one of the
reasons Baodingshan is such a useful site is because Zhao Zhifeng
divided the cliff face into particular themes such as Huayan Buddhism,
visions of the Pure Land and, most significantly for us, the courts of
hell. Uniformly seated in a row, the ten hell kings preside over all
manner of physical retribution as sinners are beaten, boiled, crushed
and dissected. The inscribed texts warn the viewer to embrace virtue
and study the dharma lest this nightmare become realized for them. And
amidst these horrors stands a life-sized Zhao Zhifeng himself with his
eyes closed and his hand pointing back toward the carnage. On either
side of him, an inscribed text repeats the basic motif of these hell
scrolls:
Siguniang (Four Girls) Mountains Scenic Area is
situated in Xiaojin County of the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous
Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. It was listed as the National
Scenic Resort in 1994 and as the National Nature Reserve in 1996. The
area consists of Mt. Siguniang, Mt.Balang and Changping, Haizi,
Shuangqiao gulleys, covering an area of 2,000 sq km. Featuring primitive
ecological condition and exquisite scenery, the area is reputed to be
the Queen of Sichuan's Mountains and the Oriental Alps Mountain. It is
also a center of attention for scientists.
