Buddhist halls vary in size, some with a three- or five-bay front while the most imposing halls may have a nine-bay front, almost as large as a palace hall. A hall can be home to just one sculpture -- in most cases the sculpture of Sakyamuni. But there are also halls in which Sakyamuni is worshipped along with a range of other Buddhist deities, and the sculptures can be placed either in the center or at the side of the wall facing the gate. Built in 857, the principal hall in the Temple of Buddhist Glory on Mt. Wutai is the oldest of its kind preserved to this day. The hall, with a seven-bay front, is 34 meters wide and 17.6 meters long. And inside the hall there is a raised platform on which more than 30 sculptures -- of Sakyamuni and his assistants -- are placed.

    Thanks to development of clay sculpturing, metallurgical and paint production techniques, taller and larger Buddhist sculptures became increasingly preferred, hence construction of halls large and high. A typical example is the Goddess of Mercy Pavilion in the Temple of Solitary Delight in Jixian County of Tianjin Municipality, which was built in 984. The pavilion, in fact a magnificent hall with a three-part exterior that resembles a three-story building, is 22.5 meters high. In the center of the hall there stands a sculpture of the Goddess of Mercy measured at 16 meters from head to foot, and to see her face, one has to look up, bending one's neck backward as far as possible. The hall would be pitched dark but for the windows on the upper part of the wall through which light is allowed in to illuminate the head of the sculpture, thus making the environment even more mysterious.

    Even larger and taller is the Hall of Supreme Wisdom in the Temple of Universal Peace in Chengde, Hebei Province. Inside the hall there stands a 24.12 meter-tall sculpture of the Bodhisattva with One Thousand Hands and One Thousand Eyes. Round the sculpture there is a cone-shaped platform of three layers, which allows people to view the statue at different heights and from different angles.

    The largest Buddha statue in China -- nay, throughout the world--is cut from a whole cliff that overlooks the Dadu River flowing past its foot, at the Temple of Rising Clouds in Leshan, Sichuan Province. The Leshan Giant Buddha is 71 meters high. Its shoulders are measured at 24 meters each, and its nose a long as five meters. It took 90 years, from 713 to 803, for workmen and artists to complete the terrific job of carving the cliff into the giant Buddha, along with construction of a

seven-story pavilion in the front to facilitate viewing of the giant Buddha. The pavilion was destroyed in fire in the Ming Dynasty. A full view of the world wonder is possible from a boat sailing mid-

stream of the Dadu River.