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Shanxi pagoda world’s oldest wood tower
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应县木塔(YINGXIAN Muta) The Sakyamuni Pagoda
Located in Yingxian County in northern China’s Shanxi Province, the Sakyamuni Pagoda of Fogong Temple is the oldest and tallest tower in the world today that is built purely of wood.
Also known as the Wooden Tower of Yingxian County, the pagoda was built in 1056 during the Liao Dynasty (AD 916-1125).
It has survived more than 950 years of natural and political upheavals, including severe earthquakes, devastating storms and wars.
According to historical records, a catastrophic earthquake hit in the area of the pagoda about 350 years ago. All nearby houses were leveled and hundreds of people died in the quake, but the pagoda still stood.
Also, it is said that people today still can find more than 200 bullet holes on the wooden structure left during battles of local warlords in 1926.
Experts have attributed the pagoda’s endurance to its unique architectural design and extraordinary ancient Chinese carpentry.
Made without a single nail or piece of metal, the builders employed 56 different types of dougong (bracket sets) and many special tenon-and-mortise techniques developed by ancient Chinese builders.
Architects explain that the dougong and the tenon-and-mortise structure resemble human joints that allowed the whole building to sway slightly and absorb some of the shock during earthquakes.
In addition to its unique and extraordinary building techniques, the 67.31-meter-tall tower features a fabulous architectural style. The building is octagonal in plan with a diameter of 30.27 meters for the ground floor, nearly half of its height and making it look well balanced. Externally, the pagoda has five stories, but since each upper floor is underpinned by a mezzanine, it actually has nine levels inside.
Each floor has two rings of columns, 24 for the outside ring and eight inside. The columns are connected with inclined struts, beams, logs and short posts to ensure the stability of the whole structure.
The ground floor is also surrounded by a peristyle and has a double eave. Each other floor has only a single eave, decorated with melodious windbells.
The exterior superposed orders are slimmed slightly on each floor, so the structure tapers from bottom to top. Built with more than 3,000 cubic meters, or 2,600 tons, of Korean wood, the pagoda is a gracefully shaped, forming an imposing architectural gem.
Each floor of the pagoda houses a statue of Buddha. On the ground floor, there’s an 11-meter-high and exquisitely-molded statue of Sakyamuni, hence the name of the pagoda.
There are also many colorful and vivid murals inside, depicting vajras, deities and Buddhist disciples. The top floor of the pagoda features a beautiful caisson ceiling and the inner walls of the sunken panel are painted with six images of Buddha.
The statues, murals and paintings of the pagoda are of great artistic value and have attracted Chinese artists, scholars and visitors from all around the country for centuries. Some people claim that the Sakyamuni Pagoda is among the three most renowned towers in the world. The other two are the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Leaning Tower in Pisa, Italy.
However, today the pagoda is facing the problem of tilting and possible collapse. The second floor of the building is seriously deformed due to aging. As a result, now only the ground floor is open to the public.
It is reported that the Shanxi Province has listed the Sakyamuni Pagoda as the priority cultural relic site for renovation in 2014.
Prescriptions & Usage:
藻井(zaojing) Caisson ceiling
As a distinctive architectural feature of temples or palaces in ancient China, zaojing, or caisson ceiling, is an ornamental sunken panel in a ceiling or dome.
Using mainly the mechanism of dougong (bracket set), the caisson is built with multiple interlocking layers of wood structural members. They are always richly carved, decorated or painted and appear in shapes such as square, circle, hexagon and sometimes a combination of these shapes.
As a symbol of sanctity, the caisson is always located directly above the most important part of a temple or palace, such as the throne or an altar. So the center of a caisson is often decorated with bas-relief carving or painting of dragons or other sacred creatures.
Apart from its function for decoration, the caisson ceiling also represents one of the lunar mansions, which is in charge of water. Since most ancient Chinese buildings were built with wood, the owners wished to have a virtual water source in the building to prevent fire hazards.
So, often one can find caisson ceilings in ancient Chinese buildings decorated with carvings or paintings of aquatic plants, such as lotus and water chestnuts.
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