Experts from the Academy of Dazu Rock Carvings in China's Chongqing Municipality are set to conclude the restoration of the statue of the "Thousand-handed Goddess of Mercy" by 2015.
After weathering centuries of wind erosion and damages, the 800-year-old rock carving of the "Thousand-handed Goddess of Mercy," also known as the Guanyin or Kwanyin, is being restored to its former glory by a team of experts from southwest China.
Originally carved in stone during the southern Song Dynasty, the statue is now housed at the Dazu Rock Carvings, a World Heritage site located in Chongqing where specialists like Xiang Li are cautiously restoring it to its original state.
Xiang, a graduate of the School of Environment in Tsinghua University, is the member of the team assigned to monitor the state of the statue in real-time through the use of a micro-environmental monitoring station.
Tasked to lead the color painting of the statue is Su Dongli, an employee of the Luoyang Museum of Ancient Arts in Shaanxi Province who also repainted 20 wall paintings and other artifacts both inside and outside the country.
Other members include Zhang Qingjun, who is occupied with gilding the statue with gold leaf; He Tianxi, who is in charge of the lacquering; and Chen Huili and Liu Pengsheng, who both specialize in rock restoration.
The team had been working on the statue since 2008 and is expected to finish by the first half of 2015.
According to the experts, the statue had experienced wind erosion as well as 34 other kinds of damages after surviving through nearly a millennium.
The Guanyin, which is short for "Guanshiyin" that literally means "observing the sounds (or cries) of the world," is an East Asian deity who had been associated with compassion and had been revered by Mahayana Buddhists.
The Goddess of Mercy, also venerated by Chinese Taoists as an immortal, was portrayed as masculine before the Song Dynasty though the Lotus Sutra described the deity as a bodhisattva, or an "enlightened being," who can take the form of any type of creature of either genders and age in order to teach the Dharma to sentient beings.