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This large Amida was completed in 1252, just before the fall of the Chinese Southern Song Dynasty to the Ghengis Khan and the Mongols. Like many large Buddha statues in China, an example being the Leshan Buddha in Sichuan, it was originally enclosed in a large Hall. The hall was reportedly was away by a tsunami in 1495, three years after Columbus 'discovered' the Americas. Now it sits in the open. When I first visited it in 1955 most of the tourists were USA GIs, and as I recall one could enter the Buddha from the rear. Now his dignity is restored and no one enters.

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