Yingxian Wooden Pagoda

Know a city because of a pagoda, and enter a city because of a pagoda. This city is today's Yingxian County, Yingzhou in the Liao Dynasty. There are no high-rise buildings in Yingxian County, and the skyline of thousands of years is still preserved. The famous Sakyamuni Wooden Pagoda stands majestically in the center of the ancient city, just like the words "Heavenly Pillar and Earth Axis" written on a plaque. The nearly 70-meter-high wooden pagoda was built in the second year of Qingning in the Liao Dynasty (1056 AD) and is the oldest and tallest wooden pagoda in the world. The body of the wooden pagoda is as towering as a heavenly palace, with a total of 54 kinds of Dougong from top to bottom. It took craftsmen 140 years to assemble this tallest "building block". It has been admired for thousands of years. It is composed of five stories and six eaves. At a glance, it is a thousand years of light and shadow overlapping, which can be described as the pinnacle of Chinese Dougong. "The palaces of Luonan are all gone, and a pagoda hangs in the blue sky." The vicissitudes of life, history is renewed, the majesty of the wooden pagoda, the magic of the wooden pagoda, and the magnificence of the wooden pagoda have already ennobled time and amazed the past and present. The plaques of different eras on the tower are unique and exquisite, which makes people sigh at the charm of Chinese calligraphy. The wooden pagoda has experienced more than 40 earthquakes, more than 200 artillery attacks, and the blowing of the north wind in Yanbei, and has steadily walked for nearly a thousand years. The architectural master Liang Sicheng sighed affectionately: "This pagoda is so good that it is amazing, so good that I can't breathe for a long time." Now it is tilted due to human reasons, but its tenacity and the sense of history are still shocking. The wooden pagoda is even more spectacular at sunset. Flocks of pigeons fly around the pagoda on the Dougong beams, bringing joy to tourists and injecting vigorous vitality into the ancient wooden pagoda.