Two weeks from now, the winding mountain road to the Yinghua monastery was to be thronged with thousands of pilgrims - a joyous local festival celebrating one of Sichuan's most scenic walks.

Today, every turn along the shattered, buckled road offers a new vision of misery: fields of corn overcome by mudslides, livestock crushed and rotting, homes reduced to splinters, families scarred by loss. There are even dark rumours circulating in the village below that the entire place is to be officially written-off - its inhabitants moved away and the rubble that used to be homes abandoned as tombs.

And yet the people of the Yingchang Valley insist that their once beautiful mountain village remains blessed by the gods. The strength of this belief is drawn from the survival of a 700-year-old statue of Old Yinghua. The monastery where it is housed may now be little more than a twisted carcass of bricks and timber, but the monks have ventured in, seen the ancient clay effigy of their founder, and confirmed that it is intact.

“It is amazing, but true,” said an elderly monk, Shi, who escaped from his lodgings as its walls collapsed around him. “All 48 of the monasteries in the area have been destroyed and all the statues have been crushed, but the oldest and most important sculpture is still in there, offering his blessing to the valley.”

Despite their delight at the survival of the sculpture, a new fear has gripped the monks as they sit in their makeshift tent under the trees. In a few days the villagers expect the Chinese Government to begin to assess the buildings left standing - an undertaking that should allow hundreds of thousands of people to return to their homes.

Shi is terrified that the Government will decide that the monastery cannot be inhabited and, worse, that its most famous relic should be removed for safekeeping: “It would be terrible for this place if they took the statue away. Everyone here wants it to stay and continue blessing the land.”

It is a concern shared by many in the village. The first crop of the year has been all but lost, and they need all the fortune Old Yinghua can bestow if the second one is to happen at all.

But word of the statue's survival has spread, and the people who used to trek up the hill every year to honour it believe that Old Yinghua is still looking after them. Standing on the rubble of what used to be his room, the manager of an old people's home searches for his shoes. His escape, he said, was yet more evidence that the statue must stay.

Some speak enthusiastically of an impending government-led revitalisation of the region and issue invitations to “come back in three years to witness a miracle”. For now, though, the odds seem heavily against that.

Mr Tao works in the Yinghua fertiliser factory in the valley. Many workers are now dead and concrete dust hangs above the factory's crookedchimneys. “It could be months before this is working again, but what it produced was so important to all the farmers here,” Mr Tao said. “Without the fertiliser it is going to be even harder for everyone to rebuild, so we have to keep the statue here.”

One of the monastery's younger acolytes - nimble enough to creep under its roof - even believes that the June 6 pilgrimage will happen. “A few will come,” he said.

Huge following

— In 2001 China announced plans to build the world’s biggest statue of Bodhisattva — the Buddha of Compassion. The 155m (509ft) project on Jiuhau mountain had a budget of £2.5 million

— The largest stone statue of Buddha is in Leshan, 160km (100 miles) from Chengdu. Carved into a cliff, the figure measures 71m and has ears 7m long. Records suggest that it took 90 years to complete

— The Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau island, Hong Kong, is 34m high, weighs 250 tonnes, is reached by 268 steps and can be seen from as far away as Macau

— A rock carving of the Laughing Buddha guards the path to Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou. A dedication to him reads: “His belly is big enough to contain all intolerable things in the world”

Source: www.imperialtours.com; Times archives

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