The Mengshan Giant Buddha is carved into the rock of the Mengshan hills, in the Jinyuan District of Taiyuan, a little behind the Kaihua Temple founded in 559. It was cut in the Northern Qi, stood under a pavilion for centuries, lost its head and was rediscovered in a place-name census in 1980 with the body buried and weathered. The site was then stabilised: the rock was reinforced, the slopes treated for mining subsidence, and a new twelve-metre head, modelled on Northern Qi heads found nearby, was set in place in 2008, when the area opened to the public.
The Mengshan Buddha is a Northern Qi cliff carving rediscovered in 1980 without its head, measured at about forty-six metres, given a new head in 2008 and lit, in the old records, by ten thousand oil basins.