Leshan

A settlement stood at the meeting of the three rivers long before the Buddha. Under the Qin and Han the county of Nan'an was set up here, and the cliff tombs cut into the sandstone beside the Buddha, mostly of the Eastern Han, show a prosperous local society. The town was known as Jiazhou, and later Jiading, through most of its history — a river port where the Min, Dadu and Qingyi came together on the water road from Chengdu to the Yangtze.

The confluence was also dangerous. In the eighth century the monk Hai Tong began carving a seated Maitreya into the cliff of Lingyun hill, by tradition to calm the waters that wrecked boats below; the stone cut from the cliff fell into the river and changed its currents. Hai Tong died with the work unfinished, and it was completed in 803 under the patronage of the regional governor Wei Gao. For centuries a thirteen-storey wooden shelter covered the figure, until it was destroyed in the wars at the end of the Yuan. Lingyun and Wuyou temples grew up on the hills on either side.

Jiading remained a regional centre under the Ming and Qing, when its walls and gates were rebuilt, and Leshan County was created here in 1734. In the Second World War the city took in Wuhan University, evacuated from the east, until 1946, and stored treasures of the Forbidden City from 1939 to 1947. After 1949 the city industrialised, and in 1996 the Buddha and Mount Emei were inscribed together as a World Heritage Site, bringing a tourist economy that now runs alongside the city's industry.

The Buddha is the centre of Leshan's identity, and the city treats it with a mixture of reverence and civic pride: it appears on everything from bus shelters to packaging, and the scenic area is the setting for New Year temple visits and school outings. Buddhism remains active at Lingyun, a Chan temple, and at Wuyou, and the nearness of Mount Emei, the sacred mountain of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, means pilgrims and monks are part of the city's traffic. The Han cliff tombs and the Thousand Buddha Cliff at Jiajiang add to the area's wealth of stone carving.

Leshan is equally proud of its literary sons. The poet and historian Guo Moruo, one of the most prominent intellectuals of twentieth-century China, was born in Shawan on the Dadu river, and the city keeps his family home as a museum. The Wuhan University years during the war are remembered too, and the city today has its own university and technical colleges.

Daily culture is Sichuanese: teahouses with bamboo chairs where mahjong is played all afternoon, long evenings at outdoor barbecue tables, Sichuan opera on television and in the parks, and a food culture noted especially for its street food. People speak the Leshan dialect, which keeps the old entering tone and is hard for other Sichuanese to follow, are informal and direct, and are used to visitors from across China but see relatively few from abroad.

The prefecture-level city has about 3.2 million people, and is a transport hub and regional centre for southern Sichuan. Industry sits alongside tourism to the Buddha and Mount Emei, which brings millions of visitors a year, and the colleges, among them Leshan Normal University; wages are below Chengdu's and many young people commute or move to the provincial capital on the hour-long train.

Residents live in apartment blocks across the old city peninsula and the newer districts to the south and west; the lanes of the old town still hold older families and small shops. The day begins with noodles or rice jelly from a stall, the long lunch hour is kept, and evenings belong to the river promenade, square dancing and the food streets. The Buddha's crowds are something residents route around rather than join.

Issues people discuss are pollution, which has also weathered the Buddha, the cost of flats in the new districts, flooding when the rivers rise in summer, and how to keep the tourist money from passing straight through to Emei. The fast rail line has made Leshan an easy day trip from Chengdu.

Leshan is noted for its food culture, and especially for the variety of its street food. Qiaojiao niurou, literally raised-foot beef, is the signature: beef and offal in a herbal broth. It originated around the town of Suji, where more than 70 restaurants serve it, and fills restaurants across the city. Bobo ji, bobo chicken, is Leshan's other export — chicken and root vegetables, often on skewers, marinated in a spicy sesame broth.

Tianpi ya, sweet-skinned duck, is a roast duck with a crisper, sweeter skin than Peking duck, sold in sealed bags as a gift to take home. Xiba doufu, the tofu of the town of Xiba, is a local speciality, and doufu nao, soft tofu with nuts and spices, is a traditional breakfast. Leshan barbecue, shaokao, grilled over charcoal and dusted with chilli and cumin, is eaten outdoors with friends and local beer.

Other local favourites include cold noodles with chilli and vinegar, sticky rice dumplings, rice jelly, liangfen, dressed in chilli oil, and the Sichuan basics of hotpot and spicy stir-fries. Tea is the daily drink in the old city's teahouses, where mahjong and the local erqishi card game are played. Meals are shared, numerous and cheap, and the best places are often the most crowded stalls.