Now good news for Buddhists and those who want to know more about Buddhist art. Pictures of different sleeping Buddha statues from around the country are currently on display in the Wofo Temple - the Temple of the Sleeping Buddha - in Beijing, along with valuable documents, which opened on Wednesday.

Images of more than 100 sleeping Buddhas are on display here. You can find the world's largest sleeping Buddha statue - from Beijing's Wan'anshan Temple, the smallest - from Henan's Longmen Grottos, as well as the oldest - dating back to the Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago.

The exhibition also shows the process of how to make the statues.

A tour guide said: "First, make a wooden mold of the statue. Second, melt the copper, and pour the liquid copper into the wooden mold. Finally add the color and gild it."

The making of Buddha statues dates back more than two thousand years, and experienced its prime about 1,700 years ago in the Three Kingdoms period and the Jin Dynasty.

Usually, a two-meter-high statue took nearly one hundred craftsmen about 12 years to complete. Most of the statues were modeled lying on their right arms.

The staff of the Beijing Wofu Temple spent five years collecting the materials for the current exhibition.

(CCTV.com April 16, 2005)