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Painted Sculptures in Shuanglin Temple

The main statue of the Mother Buddha Hall is the one-thousand-eye, one-thousand-hand Bodhisattva, looking elegant, benevolent and peaceful. It is delicately and resiliently carved, with diverse hand gestures and well-proportioned, plump arms.

Satue of One-thousand-eye, One-thousand-hand Bodhisattva

Those painted statues were made from a kind of red clay with strong viscosity. When dried, this red clay is as hard as rock and will not crack. Artisans brush dried clay with glued vitriol water and when it is dried completely they paint the clay with white powder concocted with egg white and glued water. Then they scrub it with cotton or white cloth until it shines. The last and most important procedure is to paint the clay statue. The pigment is grinded by stone and concocted with glue and water. This specially-made pigment has ensured that the colors on those statues have not faded away after hundreds of years of erosion.

Painted statues of Shuanglin Temple feature Buddhist subjects but are endowed with human characteristics. In 1988, Shuanglin Buddhist Temple was designated as the key heritage site under the state-level conservation. In 1997, it was included on the World Heritage List as part of Pingyao Old Town and considered "a real, unique treasure" by the UNESCO.


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