Thousand Buddha Mountain-----Great Display of Buddha Statues

The Thousand Buddha Mountain is a hill located southeast of the city of Jinan, Shandong Province. It is renowned for its numerous Buddha images which have been carved out of the hill's rock faces or free-standing structures erect since the times of the Sui Dynasty (581-618) and its Xingguochan Temple.

The Thousand Buddha Mountain is a small hill located about 2.5 kilometres southeast from the center of the city of Jinan. Since 1959, it has been a public park which also comprises Yellowstone Cliff to the south and Jueshan Mountain to the east and covers a total area of 1.66 square kilometers. The Thousand Buddha Mountain Public Park is flanked by a cemetery honoring the fallen of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 on the east side, the Shandong Provincial Museum to the northeast, and the Jinan Botanical Garden on the west side.

According to a legend related in the Youyang Zazu (Youyang Miscellanies) by the Tang Dynasty writer Duan Chengshi (800-863), the Thousand Buddha Mountain was originally located by the sea and the sea god had locked it in place there by a large lock in order to prevent the god in charge of the mountains from moving it around. However, eventually the lock broke and the mountain was hurled through the air into its present position. An artwork shaped as a large lock and a piece of chain has been placed on the summit of the mountain as a reference to the legend.Along with the Buddha statues, temples and other buildings were erected on the hill. The most renown of these structures is the Xingguochan Temple which was originally built during the reign of Emperor Taizhong of Tang as an expansion of the Sui-Dynasty Qianfo Temple.

The Thousand Buddha Mountain Public Park has been developed extensively for—mostly local tourism. A major tourist attraction is the Myriad Buddha Cave at the foot of the hill's northern slope. Inside the more than 500 meter-long artificial cave, late-20th-century recreations of Buddhist statues from four famous Chinese grottoes are on display. The original artworks were created during the Northern Wei, Tang, and Song dynasties. According to the operators, around 28 000 Buddhist images are on display inside the cave, the biggest statue—a lying Buddha—is 28 meters long.

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