Tian Tan Buddha (Big Buddha)

34m bronze seated Buddha on Lantau Island, completed 1993. Adjacent Po Lin Monastery, the Wisdom Path bamboo trail, and the Ngong Ping 360 cable car.

The Tian Tan Buddha — the Big Buddha — is a 34-metre bronze seated figure of Shakyamuni Buddha completed in 1993 and installed on a lotus-throne base on the Ngong Ping plateau, roughly 500 metres above sea level in the interior of Lantau Island. At completion it was the largest seated outdoor bronze Buddha statue in the world; several larger statues have since been completed in China and elsewhere. The name refers to the Temple of Heaven (Tian Tan) in Beijing, whose circular floor plan the lotus throne base echoes. The statue was cast in sections at a foundry in Nanjing and assembled on site; 268 steps rise from the base to the level of the statue's lower lotus petals, where a small museum is housed inside the base.

The plateau is dominated by the Po Lin Monastery, a Chinese Buddhist institution founded in 1906 by monks from Jiangsu who established a hermitage on the then-remote hilltop. The monastery expanded considerably in the late 20th century alongside the statue project and now includes several main halls, monks' quarters, and a widely known vegetarian restaurant open to visitors. The Wisdom Path, a short bamboo-lined trail below the statue platform, has 38 wooden columns inscribed with the Heart Sutra in Ouyang Xun's calligraphic style — an installation completed in 2005 and popular as a brief meditative walk from the main complex.

Access to Ngong Ping is by the Ngong Ping 360 cable car from Tung Chung MTR station — a 25-minute ride over the airport and forested hills — or by bus 23 from Tung Chung. The cable car provides the more dramatic approach; the bus provides a cheaper alternative when the cable car queue is long. Weekday mornings are considerably less crowded than weekends.