Discover Thousand Hands Buddha in Zhengding, Hebei Province

What has nine heads, 42 arms and is 21 meters tall. The answer isn't the punch line to a lame joke but rather the incredible statue that gives the Longxing Monastery its other appellation - the Big Buddha Temple. China's largest bronze Buddha (also known as the Thousand Hands and Thousand Eyes Buddha) is laid there.

Zhengding is a jumble of buildings from every period following the founding of the Sui Dynasty. It's the kind of place where a structure finished yesterday could exist beside one constructed 1,600 years ago and be surrounded by edifices raised in various centuries between.

Longxing Monastery in Zhengding City (situated 270 km to Beijing.) of Hebei Province ranks among the country's best-preserved temples. The monastery was a stopover for emperors undertaking pilgrimages to the Wutai Mountains. That's perhaps the reason it hosts so many sacred peculiarities. The monastery.s biggest draw is the Thousand Hands and Thousand Eyes Buddha - a misnomer by virtue of exaggeration but a namesake that nonetheless hails its uniqueness. During the Song Dynasty (AD 971) its bronze arms were destroyed but later replaced by a wooden one by believers. Yet the sculpture is the most precious one of myriad religious rarities housed by the holy site in Zhengding city.

Stepping into Longxing Temple, visitors could also find plenty of cultural relics. One of the oldest surviving artifacts is the Longcang Temple Stele, hailed as "the First Stele of the Sui Dynasty". It's actually China's oldest. Besides, a striking specimen from the period immediately following the reconstruction is a 10.8-meter octagonal rotating sutra bookshelf that's 7 meters in diameter. It's the oldest and largest of a handful that remains and offers insight into Song technology. Also, a 1,000-year-old 7.4-meter-tall Buddha carved from a single tree features slender and standing rather than sitting.

Another celebrated sculpture is unparalleled in that it depicts "China's most beautiful Guanyin" at her "most casual". The Goddess of Mercy reclines whimsically in stark contrast to her rigid depictions in the only known such rendering in dynastic history. Another interesting thing of Guanyin is, her gaze seems to follow you as you walk. Some consider her wandering eyes playful. Others call them creepy.

The buildings that house Longxing's rare relics are also exceptional in themselves. Experts nominate Mahamuni Hall as the apex of ancient Chinese architecture.