Zong Shu, expert of China Cultural Heritage Institute, said, "This is the outer layer of the statue which you can see that too much dust and the humid climate have eroded the gold foil on the surface."

The restoration project is planned to take three years to complete, with the aim of allowing the statue to stand in good condition for another century.

While for the broken hands still on the statue the method of restoration is controversial.

Zhan Changfa, team leader of Restoring project, said, "We did an experiment. We made up the broken part as we thought it should be, though we didn't have a clue of the original look. And now the result is treated with more disagreements with people questioning how did we know the shape of the lost fingers. They insist that a remake like this is not restoring history."

A survey for the protection of the legacy was carried out as early as 2001 before the project to save the one-thousand armed Goddess of Mercy was set in 2008.

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