What is cliff stone carving? According to Feng's "Golden Stone Lock": "Carved on its mountain, it is called cliff." Ye Zai, a A Qing writer, said, "Today people see headlines, or call them cliffs, but I don't know that cliffs are not all headlines. That is, the mountains in Guilin, whether poetry and songs, or praise for the ancient, praise for the Tang and Song Dynasties Pingman monument and Han Yunqing's Shunmiao monument, are not all magnificent? ..... Buddhist scriptures and statues between Jin, Yu, Qi and Lu are often carved on cliff walls ... Gaimo Cliff is still a' monument', a general term, a virtual position and a key to carving stones, and its text is also an entry. " Ma Heng's Outline of General Zhai's Stone Collection in China pointed out: "Those who chisel stones are called stones, and those who are natural are called cliffs." Xu Ziqiang and Wu Menglin thought in their new book "General Theory of Ancient Stone Carvings": "Cliff stone carving is a kind of stone carving. The so-called cliff stone carving is a stone carving that uses natural stone walls to carve notes. " The cliff stone carvings here refer to the literal stone carvings. However, when it comes to stone statues, cliff statues are often mentioned.

It seems that predecessors and sages' discussions on cliff stone carvings are nothing more than the following two views: one is that cliff stone carvings refer to stone carvings; One idea includes stone carvings and statues.

However, some scholars believe that cliff stone carvings should be divided into broad sense and narrow sense. Cliff stone carvings in a broad sense refer to everything that people carve on natural stone walls, including all kinds of stone carvings and stone carvings mentioned above, and a special kind of stone carvings-rock paintings can also be classified as cliff stone carvings. Cliff stone carving in a narrow sense refers to the literal stone carving, that is, using natural stone walls to carve notes.

Cliff stone carvings not only have rich historical connotations and values, but also many cliff stone carvings are inscribed by political or cultural celebrities, with exquisite calligraphy and precious artistic value. At the same time, these cliff stone carvings in different ages and languages are full of natural interest, huge in size and magnificent in momentum, or written by famous artists, adding profound humanistic connotation to the beautiful natural scenery. Yongqiang Cliff Stone Carvings include not only literal stone carvings, stone carvings, but also rock paintings. It is actually a small dictionary of cliff stone carvings distributed in Rhoda mountain area.