Spring Temple Buddha: Height, History and a Visitor's Guide to the Giant Buddha of Henan

The Spring Temple Buddha in Lushan County, Henan — also called the Zhongyuan Buddha — is a 128-metre statue of Vairocana Buddha that was the tallest statue…

At a glance

Height figures for very large statues are quoted several ways — statue alone, statue with its lotus throne, and the whole monument with pedestals — so this guide states which measure each number uses, following the breakdown given in the statue's reference documentation. Costs and construction figures from the building period are reported estimates, not audited accounts, and are labelled as such. Ticket prices, opening arrangements and transport timetables in rural Henan change and are not reliably published in English, so this guide deliberately gives no prices or hours: confirm them through your hotel or a current local source before travelling.

The Spring Temple Buddha — A 128 m Vairocana Buddha at Foquan Temple, completed in 2008
Height and the world record — 128 m with lotus throne; 153 m with pedestal; reported 208 m overall
Design and materials — Copper-cast figure on a lotus throne above a stepped pedestal
History: built between 1997 and 2008 — Built between 1997 and 2008 at Foquan Temple

Shortlist and comparison

Place	Why go	Planning note
The Spring Temple Buddha	A 128 m Vairocana Buddha at Foquan Temple, completed in 2008	Second-tallest statue in the world today
Height and the world record	128 m with lotus throne; 153 m with pedestal; reported 208 m overall	Tallest in the world 2008–2018, before the Statue of Unity (182 m)
Design and materials	Copper-cast figure on a lotus throne above a stepped pedestal	Look for the wheel emblem in the palm and the mark on the chest
History: built between 1997 and 2008	Built between 1997 and 2008 at Foquan Temple	Foquan Temple itself dates to the Tang dynasty
Foquan Temple and the Bell of Good Luck	Temple at the statue's base; a bronze bell of 116 tonnes	The 'Spring' name comes from the nearby Tianrui hot spring
Location: Lushan County, Henan	Zhaocun township, Lushan County, Pingdingshan, Henan	Within the Fodushan Scenic Area, near National Road G311
Visiting: what to know before you go	A large scenic area — allow half a day and expect many steps	Confirm current hours, tickets and buses locally before you go
Vairocana: the Buddha the statue depicts	The cosmic Buddha of Mahayana Buddhism — 'the Illuminator'	Look for the wheel emblems in the palms and the auspicious mark on the chest
The lotus throne, Diamond Seat and Sumeru Seat	The stacked bases: a 20 m lotus throne, the 25 m Diamond Seat and the reshaped-hill Sumeru Seat	Totals of 128 m, 153 m and 208 m depend on which bases are counted
The Bell of Good Luck	A 116-tonne bronze bell at Foquan Temple, cast in December 2000	The heaviest functioning bell in the world since 2000
How it compares: the tallest statues on Earth	Second-tallest today, behind the Statue of Unity (182 m) and ahead of Ushiku Daibutsu (120 m)	Comparisons only hold if the same height measure is used on both sides
The Fodushan Scenic Area and the Tianrui hot spring	The temple, peaks and processional avenue around the statue — and the 60 °C spring behind its name	The site is a working temple and scenic area, not a single-statue viewpoint
Getting there: via Zhengzhou and Pingdingshan	Route through Zhengzhou, Henan's air and rail hub, then overland to Lushan County	Confirm current county bus connections close to your travel date

The brands in detail

The Spring Temple Buddha

The Spring Temple Buddha is a colossal standing statue of Vairocana Buddha at Foquan Temple in Zhaocun township, Lushan County, in the Pingdingshan prefecture of Henan, China. In Chinese it is called the Zhongyuan Buddha — the 'Big Buddha of the Central Plains' — and it is also known as the Lushan Buddha after its county. Completed in 2008, the golden figure stands on a lotus throne above a broad, stepped pedestal complex, facing out over the Fodushan Scenic Area with low green hills behind it. From a distance the statue reads as a single calm silhouette; closer up, its scale only becomes clear against the buildings at its base and the people on its terraces. It remains a place of worship as well as a landmark: the temple below is active, and visitors share the site with pilgrims. For travellers, it is one of the very few modern monuments whose sheer size genuinely has to be seen to be believed — photographs flatten what the approach walk makes obvious. The Buddha's gaze is directed out across the scenic area, and the first view most visitors get is from the far end of the processional avenue, where the figure already dominates the skyline long before you reach it.

Height and the world record

The statue itself, measured together with the 20-metre lotus throne it stands on, is 128 metres (420 feet) tall. It stands on a 25-metre pedestal building, which brings the monument to 153 metres, and the hill beneath was later reshaped into two further pedestals, the upper one 15 metres tall, giving a total height now reported as 208 metres — which is why different sources quote different 'heights' for the same statue, and why this guide always says which figure it is using. On completion in 2008 the Spring Temple Buddha was the tallest statue in the world, and it held that title for a decade. It was surpassed in 2018 by the Statue of Unity in Gujarat, India, a 182-metre figure of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and is today the second-tallest statue in the world. Comparisons help convey the scale: the Statue of Liberty, measured from the ground to the tip of its torch, is 93 metres tall — the Spring Temple Buddha's statue and throne alone exceed that by 35 metres — and it is more than three times the 38-metre height, pedestal included, of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. Earlier record-holders put it in context too: it overtook Japan's 120-metre Ushiku Daibutsu, completed in 1993, which had itself defined the modern era of giant Buddhist statuary.

Design and materials

The statue depicts Vairocana, the cosmic Buddha of Mahayana Buddhism, who represents the all-encompassing nature of Buddhahood and sits at the centre of the Five Wisdom Buddhas. The figure is shown standing in flowing monastic robes, one hand raised and the other lowered; a small auspicious mark is set into the chest, and the lowered palm carries a wheel emblem, both visible in close-up photographs. Building a figure of this size in metal was an industrial project as much as an artistic one: the statue was originally estimated to consist of about 1,100 pieces of cast copper, with a total weight of around 1,000 tonnes, assembled over a supporting structure on the pedestal. The surface gives the Buddha its characteristic even gold colour, which photographs differently through the day — pale in haze, bright and hard-edged in clear sun. The lotus throne beneath the feet repeats the lotus imagery central to Buddhist art, where the flower stands for purity rising above the mud of the world. The pedestal deserves attention in its own right: photographs show a broad, pale, terraced building whose faces are patterned with long rows of small arched niches, so that the Buddha appears to rise out of a miniature terraced city of shrines. A monumental staircase climbs the front of the pedestal complex to the terrace at the statue's feet, and it is from that terrace — level with the lotus throne — that visitors get the foot-level close-ups and the view back down the avenue.

History: built between 1997 and 2008

Construction of the statue ran from 1997 to 2008 — eleven years from the start of the project to the completed figure. The overall project was estimated at the time to cost about US$55 million, with about US$18 million of that allocated to the statue itself; these are the estimates carried in reference accounts of the project rather than final audited figures, and they are best read as the scale of the undertaking rather than an exact bill. The site chosen was not new sacred ground: Foquan Temple, at whose grounds the statue rises, was founded in the Tang dynasty, more than a thousand years before the statue was imagined, and the modern Buddha was added to an already functioning temple landscape of halls, peaks and springs. In October 2008, after the statue's completion, the hill on which it stands was reshaped to form the two additional pedestals described in the height section — a reminder that the monument visitors see today was still being finished around its base even as the figure itself was complete. Projects on this scale in 1990s China were statements as much as buildings: a county-level site in rural Henan taking on — and for ten years holding — a world record held previously by Japan. That a statue in an inland agricultural province, rather than a wealthy coastal city, became the world's tallest says much about the ambition behind the Fodushan development, and it is why the Buddha is frequently cited in accounts of China's turn-of-the-century monumental building.

Foquan Temple and the Bell of Good Luck

Foquan Temple — its name translates as 'Buddha Spring Temple' — is the living temple at the heart of the site, and the statue takes its English name, 'Spring Temple', from the same source. Reference accounts explain that the name derives from the nearby Tianrui hot spring, whose water emerges at about 60 °C (140 °F) and is renowned locally for its curative properties. The temple, built in the Tang dynasty, houses the Bell of Good Luck, a bronze bell weighing 116 tonnes that is placed on top of the Dragon Head peak within the temple grounds — for many years it was described as the largest functioning bronze bell of its kind. Between the temple halls, the bell and the statue terrace, the site works on three levels at once: a working monastery, a record-breaking monument, and a scenic area arranged around the long processional approach you can see in the photograph with the location section below. Pilgrims come for the temple and the bell as much as for the statue, and on festival days the site's character is devotional first and touristic second — worth knowing if you are choosing dates, because crowds and atmosphere differ greatly between an ordinary weekday and a Buddhist festival.

Location: Lushan County, Henan

The statue stands in the Fodushan Scenic Area in Zhaocun township, Lushan County, which is administered by the prefecture-level city of Pingdingshan in southern Henan province. The scenic area lies close to National Freeway 311 (the G311 road), the main surface route through this part of the county, and the approach to the statue is part of the experience: a long, straight processional avenue and plaza lead the eye to the pedestal long before you arrive beneath it, as the view from the statue's own terrace in the photograph shows. Lushan is a rural, hilly county, and the statue's setting among wooded ridges is a large part of its character — it is not an urban monument. Most international visitors route themselves through Zhengzhou, Henan's capital and main rail and air hub, and continue overland to Lushan; because bus services and schedules in the county change, confirm the current onward connection close to your travel date rather than relying on an old itinerary.

Visiting: what to know before you go

Plan the visit as a half-day excursion rather than a photo stop. The scenic area is extensive, the approach is long, and reaching the statue's terraces involves sustained climbing on steps — the close-up of a single foot in the photograph, with its toes taller than a person, is the best warning of the scale your legs are about to meet. Go early in the day in summer, when Henan is hot and the exposed terraces offer little shade, and allow for cold wind in winter. As an active Buddhist site, the temple areas call for modest dress and quiet behaviour, and photography rules inside halls should be followed as signposted. This guide deliberately lists no ticket price or opening hours: neither is published in a stable, official English-language source, and figures repeated between travel blogs are frequently out of date. Confirm both, plus the return bus times, through your accommodation or a current Chinese-language local source before setting out — and keep the statue's own official scenic-area notices, posted at the entrance, as your final word on the day. Photographers should note that the statue faces across open ground and photographs cleanly in the morning and late afternoon, while midday haze in summer can wash the figure out entirely; the distant view from the surrounding hills, shown in the history section above, needs a clear day to be worth the detour. Carry water for the climb, and keep small notes handy for the scenic-area shuttle and incidental fees, whatever the current arrangements prove to be.

Vairocana: the Buddha the statue depicts

The figure is not the historical Buddha but Vairocana, the cosmic Buddha of Mahayana Buddhism. His Sanskrit name is usually translated as 'the Illuminator' or 'the Shining One', and he is likened to the sun because his light is said to fall on all beings impartially and without end. In Mahayana teaching Vairocana embodies universal truth itself — the dharmakaya, or truth body, of Buddhahood — and he sits at the centre of the Five Wisdom Buddhas, the group of five that expresses the aspects of enlightened wisdom. He is the central Buddha of the Avatamsaka (Flower Garland) Sutra and of China's Huayan school, which regards the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, as Vairocana's emanation in the world. That cosmic scale is precisely why Vairocana was chosen for a monument meant to be seen across a whole landscape: the statue is less a portrait of a person than a claim about the size of the truth it represents. The iconography rewards a close look, as the portrait photograph shows — a wheel emblem, for the wheel of the Buddha's teaching, is set into each palm, and the small auspicious mark sits on the chest, both picked out on the golden surface.

The lotus throne, Diamond Seat and Sumeru Seat

What the Buddha stands on is a monument in layers, and guides to the site give its parts their own names. The figure's feet rest on a 20-metre lotus throne, its broad tiers of gilded petals repeating the lotus's Buddhist meaning of purity rising unstained from the mud. Below the throne comes the 25-metre pedestal building — described in guides to the site as the Diamond Seat — a terraced structure patterned with long rows of small arched niches, with a Buddhist monastery beneath the statue; the front view in the height section shows how the Buddha rises from it like a figure from a terraced shrine-city. Below that again, the hill itself was reshaped in October 2008 into two further pedestals, the upper one 15 metres tall, forming what the guides call the Sumeru Seat, after Mount Sumeru, the mountain at the centre of the Buddhist cosmos. The names are not decoration: they stack the Buddha on the lotus of purity, the diamond of indestructible truth and the mountain at the world's centre. They also explain the rival totals — 128 metres counts the statue and throne, 153 adds the Diamond Seat, and 208 counts the whole reshaped hill.

The Bell of Good Luck

Eight years before the statue was finished, Foquan Temple acquired a record-breaker of its own. The Bell of Good Luck — Jixiang zhong in Chinese — is a bronze bell cast in December 2000 and first rung at midnight on New Year's Eve that year, to welcome the new century. It weighs 116 tonnes, stands 8.108 metres tall and measures 5.118 metres across the mouth, and its shoulder is decorated with 36 lotus petal patterns. Since its casting it has held the title of the heaviest functioning bell in the world: heavier bells exist, most famously Russia's Tsar Bell at around 200 tonnes, but that bell cracked before it was ever hung and has never sounded, so it is a monument rather than an instrument. Like other great Chinese temple bells, the Bell of Good Luck is sounded by striking from outside rather than by an internal clapper. It hangs on Dragon Head peak within the temple grounds, and for the eight years between its first ringing and the Buddha's completion it was, by itself, the site's claim to a world record — the statue did not create Foquan Temple's record-breaking habit, it continued it. This section carries no photograph: no verified freely licensed photograph of the bell itself could be found, and no other image is substituted.

How it compares: the tallest statues on Earth

Set against the world's other giants, the Spring Temple Buddha's decade on top looks like one chapter in a long escalation. It took the record in 2008 from Japan's Ushiku Daibutsu, a 120-metre Buddha completed in 1993, and held it until 2018, when India's Statue of Unity — a 182-metre figure of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat — surpassed it by a deliberate margin. It remains the second-tallest statue in the world today, and the tallest Buddha. Older landmarks shrink beside it: the Statue of Liberty measures 93 metres from the ground to the tip of its torch, less than the Spring Temple Buddha's statue and throne alone, and Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro reaches 38 metres including its pedestal, under a third of the figure at Lushan. Two cautions apply to every such comparison. First, heights are only comparable when the same things are counted — statue, throne, pedestal and reshaped hill give this one monument totals of 128, 153 and 208 metres. Second, records in this field are temporary by design: each generation's tallest statue has so far been a target for the next, and the Spring Temple Buddha's own builders knew the Ushiku record they were beating.

The Fodushan Scenic Area and the Tianrui hot spring

The statue is the centrepiece of a much larger whole. The Fodushan Scenic Area spreads across the wooded hills around it: Foquan Temple's halls at the base, Dragon Head peak carrying the Bell of Good Luck, the long processional avenue and plaza that organise the approach, and terraces and viewpoints that return the view across the valley. The whole site takes its English name from water rather than stone. Near the temple is the Tianrui hot spring, whose water emerges at about 60 °C (140 °F) and is renowned in the area for its curative properties; Foquan itself translates as 'Buddha Spring Temple', and the statue's English name, Spring Temple Buddha, follows from the same spring. Understanding that helps make sense of the site's double character: it is at once a pilgrimage place organised around a Tang-dynasty temple and a health-giving spring, and a modern scenic development organised around a world-record statue. Visitors who allow time only for the statue miss the frame that gives it meaning — the temple courtyards, the bell on its peak and the avenue are not preliminaries to the Buddha, they are the older site into which the Buddha was set.

Getting there: via Zhengzhou and Pingdingshan

There is no shortcut to Lushan County, and planning the journey honestly is part of planning the visit. The statue stands in a rural, hilly county of southern Henan, far from any international gateway. Most visitors route themselves through Zhengzhou, the provincial capital and Henan's main air and rail hub, and continue overland — through Pingdingshan, the prefecture-level city that administers Lushan, and on into the county, where the scenic area lies close to National Road G311. Treat the transfer as a journey of hours rather than minutes and, if you are coming from Zhengzhou, allow a full day for the return trip rather than bolting the statue onto a tight itinerary. From Pingdingshan and Lushan town, local buses and taxis serve the scenic area, but county services change and are not reliably published in English, so confirm the current connection, and especially the last return service, close to your travel date through your accommodation or a current Chinese-language source. This guide states no timetables or fares, deliberately, for the same reason it states no ticket prices: an out-of-date certainty helps no one at a rural bus stop. The reward for the effort is the arrival itself — the statue appears over the hills well before the avenue, as the distant view in the history section shows.

How to choose

Start with the real decision: who will use this, where, how often, and what would make the choice unsafe or disappointing? The following checks keep the shortlist practical.

Which height is being quoted — statue, statue plus throne, or the whole monument with pedestals
Season and weather: the statue is fully outdoors, and Henan summers are hot while winters are cold
Time needed for the scenic area's approach, steps and temple buildings, not just the statue
Current opening arrangements, ticket rules and bus times, confirmed through a recent local source
Respectful conduct: this is an active Buddhist temple site, not only a viewpoint

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