More images at Zhao Mu's blog

A bodhisattva has appeared on a hillside in Chongqing's Wanzhou District.

After a local construction worker saw flashes coming from a rock formation shaped like a human form earlier this month, the hill has draw thousands of pilgrims. The Beijing News reports today that as of yesterday, a crowd of nearly 5,000 people had gathered at the site. Police tape had been set up and signs posted explaining that the "image" was only a natural formation.

The Chongqing Evening News sent a skeptical reporter to investigate:

Yesterday [Nov. 13] at around 11 am, at the Wei'an Cliff in the resettlement city of Bai'anba, Wanzhou District, over one hundred people from all parts of the city crowded along the winding mountain road. The air was filled with the sound of firecrackers, and ghost money drifted about in the wind. Smoke and scraps of paper extended for hundreds of meters.

These people were headed for Wei'an Cliff's "bodhisattva image." According to a few people from the Chongqing Three Gorges Institute, whose new campus is under construction nearby, on the night of November 7, workshed manager Lao Cheng saw a golden flash on the rock wall all of a sudden. He went up to have a look, and then discovered the bodhisattva image. The workers said that from then on, Lao Cheng kept exclaiming that he had seen a "divine light" and was under its protection. Rumors about the "bodhisattva apparition" quickly spread, and more than 1,000 people have come every day to worship. Someone even made a post online saying, and the rumor grew even more fantastic.

What does the bodhisattva image look like? Pressing through the crowd, this reporter arrived at the ground beneath the rock, where people were kneeling in adoration. The rock face in the center was sandstone, but perhaps my eyes are bad, because I couldn't see an image of a person.

Pilgrims at the rock

"That's a finger, that there is an arm....," pious worshipers explained, pointing to fissures and furrows. I looked again, but I still couldn't seen anything. As this was going on, people were draping red sashes onto the "bodhisattva," lighting incense, kneeling on the ground as they chanted, praying to the "bodhisattva" to protect their families, and then setting off firecrackers.

Mr. Wan, a local resident who had come to see the commotion, didn't believe that this was a bodhisattva apparition: "It probably just looks like a person, a natural coincidence. It's not worth worshiping. If it's not, then there are tons of rocks that look like people or gods in the Stone Forest. You'll break your skull with all that genuflecting."

Does the "bodhisattva image" really "flash"? Reportedly, local reporters investigated this claim. on November 11, they waited until 2 am but saw nothing. During my investigations, I never found "workshed manager Lao Cheng."

The new campus of the Chongqing Three Gorges Institute is only a few hundred meters from the "bodhisattva image." The sheer number of people that have been streaming in from the city the past few days has caused no end of headaches for the Institute and the construction workers. "Every day more than 1,000 people come to worship and burn insense, and it's seriously affected the progress of our work," said a person in charge of one construction project for the new campus. The campus construction site is right in the path of the people who are coming to "worship the bodhisattva," and the thousand visitors a day who pass through, plus the noise from the firecrackers and the drifting paper money annoyed the workers to no end. The construction team said that it was very worried about the safety of the pilgrims because the area was under construction.

Yesterday afternoon, a representative of the office of the Wanzhou Propaganda Department said that experts had verified that the so-called "bodhisattva image" was merely eroded stone, an entirely natural phenomenon. The individual said that the district government was highly concerned about the crowds passing through the Institute campus on their way to worship. It had held an emergency meeting on November 12, where it was decided to discourage superstitious activity and to allow construction to proceed normally.

Geologists sent by the Wanzhou District government to investigate the phenomenon said that the sandstone contained reflective minerals such as quartz and mica, which could explain the flashes that Lao Cheng saw.

The Beijing News concludes its report on an ominous note:

Assistant director Wang of the Wanzhou Land Bureau said that after consulting experts, it advised the district government to blast the rock apart.