Work has started on the restoration of the over 800-year-old Qianshou (A Thousand Hands) Guanyin statue on Mount Baoding in Dazu County, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

The project is proceeding well and is expected to be completed within three years, local museum sources told Xinhua.

Historical records show that the statue of Guanyin, or the Goddess of Mercy, was last restored more than 300 years ago during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Due to hundreds of years of weathering, the statue has lost its splendor and one of its arms was broken in the mid 1990s.

Normally, a Guanyin statue only has 10 arms and it is rare for it to have 100 arms. However, this Guanyin statue has 1,007 arms, with one eye carved on each palm which is the reason why it is called the Qianshou-Qianyan Guanyin (Thousand Hands-Thousand Eyes Guanyin).

The niche for the statue is 7.7 meters high and 12.5 meters wide. It covers an area of 88 square meters and is on the face of a cliff ranging in height from 15 to 30 meters.

Tong Dengjin, curator of the Dazu Stone Carving Art Museum, said that earlier this year Chinese relics experts conducted investigations on the rock formation and geological structure of the stone cave. They plan to make further investigations at the niche at the end of this month.

Based on these surveys, a restoration plan will be worked out. The restoration is expected to restore the statue back to its original magnificence, according to Tong, the curator.

Originally, this Guanyin statue was pasted with gold powder and this time, restorers will paste gold foil on the surface of the statue.

The project is to cost more than 2 million yuan (about US$240,000).

(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2002)