Re-carving meanings: negotiating social value and conservation in southwest China’s rock carvings

This paper examines the dynamic interplay between social value and heritage conservation through the lens of Buddhism-inspired rock carvings in southwest China. Interrogating the state-led restoration of the Thousand-Hand Guanyin at Dazu and the grassroots repainting controversy at Anyue, this paper reveals the significance of heritage practice as an active force in the rearticulation of existing values. The carvings under scrutiny here, although rooted in decentralized religious landscapes from the Tang–Song period, continue to function as living monuments – sites of devotion, aesthetic judgement, and institutional intervention. Using a combination of ethnographic fieldwork, policy analysis, and heritage theory, I explore how conservation decisions are being shaped by local belief systems and, in turn, are reshaping the meanings communities attribute to these carved stones. By tracing the biographies of these monuments and the contestations they provoke, I expose the ontological status of carved stone and evidence the politics of conservation in contemporary heritage regimes.