Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is the tallest and oldest existing wooden tower building in China. (Reporter wanglili)
Cctv news(Reporter wanglili) Name: Buddha Temple Sakyamuni Pagoda, commonly known as Yingxian Wooden Pagoda.
Age: 964 years old
Place of Birth: Yingxian County, Shuozhou City, Shanxi Province
Height: 67.31 meters
Weight: 3000 tons
Signs: Pure wood structure without nails and riveting
Honors: the world’s tallest wooden tower, China Ancient Building Dougong Museum, etc.
More than 900 years ago, more than 100,000 pieces of wood, like building blocks, were built by a group of craftsmen. This pure wooden tower with no nails and no rivets, but the height is equivalent to the current 20-storey high-rise building and the diameter is 7 basketball courts. After experiencing disasters such as earthquake, fire and artillery fire, this Millennium wooden tower has stood still.
Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy and the Eiffel Tower in France are also called "the three wonders of the world". Then, why was this world-famous tower built in Yingxian? What’s magical about it?
Magnificent "Royal Super Project"
The panorama of Yingxian wooden pagoda, which is 964 years old. (Reporter wanglili)
Starting from Taiyuan, it is more than 200 kilometers to the north. After crossing Yanmenguan, it comes to Yingxian County. When you get off the expressway, you can faintly see the wooden tower standing in the northwest corner of Yingxian County.
Yingxian Wooden Pagoda was built in the second year of Qing Ning in Liao Dynasty, that is, in 1056 AD. In 1961, it was included in the first batch of national key protected cultural relics units in China. Yingxian Wooden Pagoda has five open floors and four dark floors, totaling nine floors. In 2016, it was certified by Guinness World Records as "the tallest pure wooden structure in the world".
Why is such a world-famous wooden tower built in Yingxian County? Who is the craftsman? How was it built? Regarding these problems, Fang Guoyi, director of the Muta Cultural Protection Institute of Shanxi Yingxian Cultural Relics Bureau, said that there is no accurate record in the historical materials. The earliest existing historical material about the "life experience" of the wooden tower is the Yingzhou Annals compiled by Tian Hui in the Ming Dynasty, which only contains a few words: "In the second year of Liao Qing Ning, Tian Shang was given a gift to build it."
But what is certain is that such a spectacular and grand project can not be completed by ordinary people. Fang Guoyi said that although there are many opinions about the wooden tower, according to expert research, it is recognized by historians that the tower is the national project of Da Liao. At that time, Da Liao won the war with the Northern Song Dynasty and signed a very famous "League of Yuan" in history. On the premise of economic and political stability, the wooden tower was built.
At present, among the more than 600 cultural relics found in the tower, the two Buddha tooth relics of Sakyamuni are the most shocking to the world. In addition, there are 54 precious plaque couplets on the tower, among which "Perfect Wonder" by Zhu Di of Ming Chengzu and "Wonders of the World" by Zhu Houzhao of Ming Wuzong are rare treasures.
A tower represents a museum of ancient buildings in China.
The whole tower uses 59 kinds of bucket technology unique to China architecture. (Image courtesy of Yingxian Muta Wenbao)
In the past thousand years, a large building made of wood has experienced various disasters such as earthquakes, strong winds and artillery fire. Why can it stand still? It was not until nearly a hundred years ago that Liang Sicheng, an architect, learned from the articles of Japanese scholars that there was a peerless building "Yingxian Wooden Pagoda" in Yingxian County, which opened the door to the study of Yingxian Wooden Pagoda culture.
The whole wooden tower consists of three parts: tower foundation, tower body and tower brake. The wooden tower is octagonal in appearance. The most shocking thing about the wooden tower is that the whole tower is made of more than 100,000 pieces of red pine, and the splicing method is the bucket arch of the ancient traditional buildings in China. There are 59 kinds of bucket arches used in the whole tower, which is one of the buildings with the most kinds of bucket arches and the most exquisite design in ancient buildings in China. Therefore, Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is called "China Ancient Building Bucket Museum".
"One is like a bucket filled with rice, and the other is like a bow rolled up. The structure is the same, but the shape is ever-changing. The number of bucket arches shows the level of the building. The more layers of bucket arches, the higher the building level." Fang Guoyi said that ancient craftsmen had mastered the principles of modern structural mechanics, and the whole wooden tower was a mortise-and-tenon structure. The only way to understand its structure was to tear it down, but no one was sure that it could be restored without drawings. Because of this, Yingxian Wooden Pagoda has never been overhauled.
The wooden structure should be afraid of wind, fire, earthquake and insects, but in the past thousand years, Yingxian wooden tower has experienced many major earthquakes, and it was shot more than 200 times during the warlord scuffle in 1926, and it is still safe. Fang Guoyi said that the reason for this is related to 59 kinds of bucket arches with different functions in wooden towers, which are combined with tenons and mortises. This crisscross combination is like adding a layer of spring between beams and columns, which can effectively resist earthquakes and other different external forces.
Continuously protect and monitor the wooden tower in a safe and stable state.
Every little detail of the wooden tower reveals the architectural wisdom of the ancients. (Reporter wanglili)
Once upon a time, every year during the Dragon Boat Festival, local people had to wear new clothes, and the whole family, old and young, climbed the wooden tower together, which meant that the next year would be a rising day. Nowadays, although Yingxian Wooden Pagoda still maintains a good appearance, after all, it has suffered from wind and rain erosion and wood aging, and the tower body has tilted to the northeast.
In order to protect the wooden tower, only the first floor in the tower is open to the public, and visitors can no longer visit the tower.
It is understood that since 1989, the state began to study the related protection work of Yingxian wooden tower. On May 1, 2019, the Regulations on the Protection of Sakyamuni Pagoda in Buddha Palace Temple in Yingxian County of Shuozhou City was officially implemented. The relevant person in charge of Yingxian government said that Yingxian Wooden Pagoda has extremely high historical value, artistic value and scientific value, and it is the pride of the Chinese nation. Our generation should protect it and never let the tower be damaged again.
In addition to the technical support and artificial protection of the wooden tower itself, every year after Tomb-Sweeping Day and beginning of autumn, a kind of birds called Mayan will flock around the wooden tower and eat the insects born in the wood, thus solving the moth-eaten problem of the wooden tower.
Fortunately, with the joint efforts of the government, scenic spots and the general public, and the continuous monitoring of Yingxian wooden tower by Shanxi cultural relics department, the deformation data of the wooden tower has not increased in the past five years, and the overall structure is relatively stable and safe.
Yang Xiao Xiao, a scenic spot of Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, said that two recent fires in the National Museum of Brazil and Notre Dame de Paris have sounded the alarm for everyone. In addition to doing their job well, she and her colleagues have become voluntary fire supervisors in the scenic spot, who will supervise tourists to ban smoking and prevent open flames in the scenic spot.
Fang Guoyi said that in order to ensure that the wooden tower is not damaged by fire, they cooperated with the fire department to tailor the fire fighting plan for the wooden tower, regularly carried out fire fighting drills, and equipped with facilities and equipment such as fire prevention, lightning protection, theft prevention, damage prevention and biological disease prevention, and patrolled 24 hours a day.