You should have seen root carvings, but you have not necessarily seen thousands of root carvings concentrated together in a thousand shapes and sizes; you may have seen large root carvings, but you probably have not seen the world's largest root carving of 9.9 meters high and weighing 40 tons. At the source of Qiantang River - Kaihua County, Zhejiang Province, there is a shocking world's only root culture theme tourist area, where the landscape is dominated by the art of root carving, bonsai art, stone appreciation culture and ancient garden construction, although the works are from the contemporary, each piece is a boutique, so it is known as "today's boutique, tomorrow's cultural relics, the next day's heritage. Tomorrow's cultural relics, the day after tomorrow's heritage".
This place is the Kaihua Root Palace Buddha, a national 5A tourist attraction, where the world's largest root art Sakyamuni Buddha statue, 680 meters long giant root carving Wu Bai Luohan formation, countless root carving boutique, let's say, if you like root carving art, this is the Mecca of root carving, if you do not know root carving art, this place can also make you dazzled.
The entrance of the root carving the Buddha Kingdom, except for the "China Root Art Expo Park" and the 5A tourist attraction logo, is a bit small and low key.
After entering, I found that the door is a bit different, with two large roots, looking at the size, how the tree must be more than hundreds of years old.
Further inside is the "Blessed Gate Xiangguang", this huge sculpture is not a root carving, but a glass fibre reinforced plastic imitation copper production, 11 meters high.
Root Palace of Buddha is a large gardening and root carving world, this "100 wood with spring" attractions, there are large thousands of years of dead trees and sunken wood from all over the country more than two hundred pieces. The tallest of them is more than 7 meters, the longest is more than 2,300 years old, and some of the sunken trees have been underwater for more than 1,800 years.
Although there is a lot of fine horticulture in the scenic area, the main attraction is the two antique buildings in the picture, the Drunken Root Palace Museum and the Root Palace Pagoda. The main hall is modelled after the Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan, but of course, the Todaiji Temple is also a replica of the Tang architecture, a thousand years a reincarnation.
The 13-story Negi Palace Pagoda, with an additional floor in the underground palace, is 79.99 meters high and cost 40 million yuan just for the construction, not to mention the many rare treasures placed in the pagoda.
The 1-2 floors of the Root Palace Pagoda are decorated with four statues of Guanyin: Thousand-Handed Guanyin, Dripping Guanyin, Ruyi Guanyin, Reclining Guanyin and Guanyin 33 Shakti; the 3-4 floors are decorated with 800 Lohans carved from sunken wood; the 5-10 floors are decorated with 100 statues of Guanyin; and the 11-12 floors are decorated with Guanyin murals. The top floor is dedicated to the four-sided Guanyin carved in wood, and a five-ton inscribed bronze bell, the eight-sided Zen bell, is placed in the middle. The underground palace displays the statues of Guanyin through the ages.
Behind the Drunken Root Heavenly Palace Museum, there are actually three halls of the Root Palace Buddha Kingdom built on the mountain, as well as the Luohan Cultural Corridor, all four buildings and the corridor are filled with rare root carving masterpieces.
At first sight, there is a giant root carving "Spirit Mountain Protector", which may not be very clear in the small picture, but in fact, this work reproduces the famous Peking Opera play "Eighteen Luohan Descending the Roc", which is very detailed and exquisite.
This work is actually a pair of tigers. What is especially precious is that the tigers are carved from the root block of Cyathea wood, which is known as "living fossil", and the mane and pattern on the back of the tigers are made of the natural texture of Cyathea wood. The value of the root itself is combined with the value of art.
The Four Heavenly Kings, the Southern Growing Heavenly King, holding the Sword of Wisdom, the root stump of a thousand-year-old fragrant maple from southern Fujian, weighing 7 tons; the Eastern Holding Heavenly King, holding a lute, the root stump of a local bitter Quercus, weighing 6.5 tons; and the Northern Dovinian Heavenly King, the stump of a stone gravel tree from Shandong, weighing 6 tons; and the Western Wide Eye Heavenly King, the root stump of a Guangxi bitter Quercus, weighing 8 tons.
This smiling Maitreya Buddha, weighing 16 tons, with the peculiar pimples of golden camphor as dense as pearls.
Besides the Buddha statues in mythological stories, there are also historical monks, such as this Venerable Hui Jiao, a senior monk in the Liang Dynasty of the Southern Dynasty, a native of Shangyu, Zhejiang Province, who wrote 14 volumes of the famous Buddhist book "The Legend of the High Monks".
The 135 Luohan statues in the Hall of Luohan are beautifully carved from roots to represent the Buddha's return to his homeland.
The figures are richly portrayed, with a mixture of form and spirit, some discussing seriously, some listening carefully, some thinking hard, some rejoicing, and some relaxing. ......
In the Luohan Gallery built on the mountain, there are even 233 Luohans displayed on both sides.
Some of these Luohan have their chests and bellies exposed, seemingly smiling; some are holding beads with their staffs and hands together; some are digging their ears and pinching their noses, naive. Walking through the corridor is just like a rich journey, a life of a hundred states, warm and cold.
After seeing so many fine products, the real gem is still behind, the statue of Sakyamuni in the middle, 9.9 meters high, weighing more than 40 tons, the wood is yellow heart nan, very rare.
This huge and rare piece came from a small town timber factory in Myanmar when the thousand-year-old root was about to be dissected by the workers' chainsaw.
The two venerable Gaya and Ananda on either side of Shakyamuni are also huge in size, with the wood of Gaya being yellow-hearted nan, weighing 9 tons. The wood of Venerable Ananda is made of a date palm root pile, weighing 12 tons.
In addition to the large and small root carvings, the root carvings are also transformed into murals here.
Even the ones along the stairway are natural stone eggs.
Inside the Root Palace Pagoda, the thousand-armed Goddess of Mercy on the first floor is also really stunning, carved from Burmese mahogany and thousand-year-old lychee roots, 7.5 meters high and weighing more than 30 tons.
The natural lingzhi-like texture surrounds the whole body like auspicious clouds, and is transformed into a thousand hands and thousand eyes by the screen-like lychee roots.
The spiral-shaped algae is well on top of the head of Thousand-Handed Goddess of Mercy.
A string of stone carved lychees is placed on the offering table, and the natural colour of jade is just right.
Root Palace Buddha is the palace of the root, the kingdom of Buddha, Kaihua root carving from the Tang Dynasty began to rise, after more than a thousand years of evolution and development, gradually formed a fusion of root art, Buddhism, aesthetics, ecology in one, with a unique artistic charm of the root carving culture, was listed as intangible cultural heritage of Zhejiang Province, the completion of the root Palace Buddha, to further determine the "world root carving see China, China root carving in Kaihua" status, whether you know the root carving art, like the root carving art, come to the root Palace Buddha to see, will definitely let you feast your eyes on.
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