A hotbed of history

"When I walked on the plank road, built into the dangerous cliffs above the gushing Jialing River, I had an awesome respect for those who built it," says Wu Dan, a female tourist from Beijing.

Also on the Shu Path is the Jueyuan Temple, which was built in 816 during the Tang Dynasty. The temple holds China's best-preserved and most complete Buddhist murals.

Covering 174 square meters, the Ming Dynasty murals tell 209 stories about Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, starting with his reincarnation and ending with the distribution of his Buddhist relics by his disciples.

The murals are painted in the style of Wu Daozi, a famous Tang Dynasty painter known for his figure paintings, says Wang Xianjun, a guide at the temple.

Written during the Ming Dynasty, the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms has stories which take place in Guangyuan.