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New Plank Road to Gigantic Buddha Statue
A new plank road will be built this year along the cliff leading to the world's biggest statue of the Buddha, in Leshan, a city in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
The road, about 300 meters long and 1.3 to two meters wide, will help to protect the statue, which is 71 meters high and 1,280 years old, said Zeng Zhiliang, an engineer with the local administration office.
Currently about one million visitors flock to the statue annually.
The design proposal has been submitted to the State Bureau of Cultural Relics and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The new plank road will cost over ten million yuan (about US$1.2 million) and the office has applied for a loan from the World Bank.
China recently began to give a facelift to the statue, which has been included in UNESCO's World Cultural Heritage list and has suffered weathering from the wind, water, acid rain and damage from visitors for centuries.
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