After leaving Hunyuan, we continued to drive to Ying County. Ying County is adjacent to Hunyuan, but it is under the jurisdiction of Shuozhou City. Although Ying County is small, the Ying County Wooden Pagoda in the county is a famous scenic spot in the whole country. Yingxian wooden pagoda ranks among the four most famous pagodas in the country, and some people list the wooden pagoda, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower as the three famous pagodas in the world.
When we arrived at Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, it was already lunch time. We have lunch at a restaurant near the scenic spot. Maybe it's been a busy morning and I'm a little hungry. I ordered a table of dishes, especially the Shanxi fried oil cake, which aroused great interest from everyone.
After lunch, walk to Yingxian Wooden Pagoda.
The official name of Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is "Shijia Pagoda". Because it is built purely with wood, it is commonly known as Yingxian Wooden Pagoda. The wooden pagoda was built in the second year of Qingning (AD 1056) in the Liao Dynasty, and was added once in the sixth year of Mingchang (AD 1195) in the Jin Dynasty. It is the tallest, oldest and only wooden pavilion tower in China.
The wooden pagoda was built under the edict of Empress Dowager Xingzong Renyi of the Liao Kingdom. The queen mother was born in the Xiao family of Yingzhou (now Yingxian), so she is called Queen Mother Xiao in history. There are three princes from the Xiao family: the Queen Mother's father and two brothers; Empress Dowager Renyi believes in Buddhism, and built this pagoda, one is to promote Buddhism, and the other is to promote the glory of the three kings and three queens.
Our country has issued special stamps of the four famous pagodas. There are many versions of the four famous pagodas, but no matter which version, the Shijia Pagoda in Yingxian County and the Feihong Pagoda in Hongdong are among them, which shows that people have a high evaluation of these two pagodas in Shanxi.
I have been to Ying County three times. One was when the meeting was held in Datong more than 30 years ago, and the meeting organization came to visit. At that time, the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda was not a tourist attraction, so it was not open to the public, but the leaders of Yingxian's missionary department took everyone up there. The inside of the tower is dim, and there is not much impression. I just remember that everyone went up the wooden stairs and made the sound of "gezhigezhi". Ying County in my memory is also a small town, with narrow old streets lined with low, old brick and wooden houses on both sides. Ying County Wooden Pagoda is located near the intersection of the old street.
The second time was more than 20 years ago, a group of fellow villagers passed by Ying County when we took a minibus to Hengshan. At that time, the wooden tower has been developed into a tourist attraction. There is a square in front of the tower, and the old tile-roofed houses around it have been demolished. Due to time constraints, everyone took pictures outside for a while, but did not enter the tower to visit.
The third time I came to Ying County with my wife. I saw it most carefully that time, and climbed up to the third floor of the wooden tower. At that time, there were spacious roads in Ying County, and there were tall buildings beside the roads. Department stores and supermarkets were packed with crowds. The wooden pagoda scenic spot has also been transformed, and there is a bustling street in front of the wooden pagoda. The tower garden also built a wall.
This is the fourth time I have come here. Compared with the scene in my memory, the scenic square has a new expansion. The gate of the scenic spot is built farther away. Now if you don't buy tickets, you can no longer take a picture of the wooden tower like last time.
In the square, stands a statue of Guanyin. I am quite surprised about this: the wooden pagoda is called the Sakyamuni pagoda, why is there a statue of Avalokitesvara at the front?
Behind the Guanyin statue is the mountain gate of Fogong Temple. It turns out that the Sakyamuni Pagoda is located in the Fogong Temple, so the wooden pagoda is also called "Fogong Pagoda". Fogong Temple was first built in the second year of Liao Qingning, and it was built at the same time as the Sakyamuni Pagoda. The temple was originally named Baogong Temple, and was renamed Fogong Temple in the second year of Yuan Yanyou (1315). It was repaired repeatedly in Ming and Qing dynasties. What you see now is probably newly repaired.
The mountain gate is three wide, with a single eye resting on the top of the mountain. The blue horizontal plaque under the eaves is written with three gold characters "Fogong Temple". On both sides of the gate hangs a couplet inscribed by Zhao Puchu: "The ancient pagoda is Qianxun, a state is blessed to look up to the national treasure; the palace is majestic, and the people are happy to sing the Sanskrit." It is just a cliché, meaningless.
Different from the front temple and the back tower of other temples, here is the tower courtyard after entering the mountain gate. A tall wooden tower stands in front of you. Visitors are all amazed by its majesty and magnificence!
The wooden tower is built on a four-meter-high platform, with an octagonal plane and a diameter of 30.27 meters at the bottom of the tower. From the outside, the pagoda has five floors, with double eaves on the ground floor, a total of five floors and six eaves. The height of the tower is 67.31 meters. There are dark layers between each layer, five bright and nine dark, for a total of nine layers.
The whole tower is supported by two circles of wooden pillars inside and outside. There are eight columns in the inner circle and 24 columns in the outer circle. The wooden columns are connected by components such as diagonal braces, beams, squares and short columns to form a compound beam wooden frame. Therefore, the whole tower has integrity and is extremely solid. In the more than 300 years since the pagoda was built, there have been seven major earthquakes. The houses around the largest earthquake were razed to the ground, but the wooden pagoda remained motionless, becoming a miracle among wooden structure pagodas. The proportion of the whole tower is appropriate, solemn and stable, the building is magnificent, and the art is exquisite, so some people collectively call it the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Brick Tower of Pisa and the Yingxian Wooden Tower.
Some people calculate that the entire wooden tower uses 3,000 cubic meters of red pine wood, which weighs more than 2,600 tons. These timbers all come from Huanghualiang in the northwest of Ying County. The original virgin forest there was completely cut down for building towers. So the common people said: "Cut down the Huanghualiang and build the Yingzhou Pagoda".
Walk around the wooden tower and take pictures of the wooden tower from different directions. The outline of the whole tower is from top to bottom, forming a beautiful curve. Tasha is towering, piercing the blue sky, showing a more majestic appearance. Corridors are set up on each exposed floor of the wooden pagoda, and there are plaques under the eaves of each floor.
The title of the plaque on the ground floor of Zhengnan is "Eternal View", under the eaves of the second floor is "Pillar of Heaven and Earth Axis", under the corridor of the third floor is "Uprightness", under the eaves of the third floor is "Tiangong towering", and on the fourth floor is a vertical plaque "Shakya Pagoda", the fifth floor is "Wonders of the World", and the top floor is "Junji Shengong" under the eaves.
Among them, the topmost "Junji Shengong" was written by Zhu Di, the founder of Ming Dynasty, who led the army to the Northern Expedition in the fourth year of Yongle, when Hua was stationed in Yingzhou. "Wonders of the World" was written by Emperor Wuzong of the Ming Dynasty Zhu Houzhao, who supervised the army in the third year of Zhengde to defeat the Tatar invasion in Yanghe and Yingzhou, and climbed the wooden pagoda to entertain the officials. According to reports, the bottom-level "Wan Gu Guan Zan" was written by a local corrupt official. Because the font is very beautiful, the common people still keep this plaque, but the inscription on it is erased, and a piece of "integrity" written by the common people themselves is hung on the third floor. Therefore, which official is good and which official is corrupt, the common people have their accounts in mind.
There are 54 plaques and couplets of the Ming, Qing and the Republic of China in the tower. For example, on the southeast side, there are three plaques of "golden light shines", "steep above the sky" and "magnificent". In the east, there are "Ciguang Yuanxi", "Tianhua Yunjin" and "Vientiane Spring". In Zhengxi, there are "Xiangyun Popularizing the Law", "Flower Palace Immortal Vatican" and so on. There is probably no other pagoda with so many plaques.
Then, we stepped into the tower to visit. The bottom floor opens to the north and south, and there is a tall statue of Sakyamuni Buddha in the center of the tower room. It is different from the Buddha statues we usually see. But the Tathagata has a green moustache, green eyebrows, and earring holes in both ears. It is a Khitanized statue of Sakyamuni.
According to information: The statue is a clay sculpture with a wooden frame. During the ten years of turmoil, the jewels and other objects hidden in the chest of the Buddha statue were swept away. The most regrettable thing is that there are also important documents such as wooden pagoda design documents and pagoda construction records, which were also burned. Its heavy loss cannot be made up. At that time, the Buddha's fingers were also cut off, but what I see now is to make up again, and the effect is obviously not as good as before.
The algae well on the top of the Buddha is also extremely beautiful and unpredictable. There are also six portraits of Tathagata on the wall of the inner tank, which are still colorful. The flying apsaras on both sides of the top of the six Tathagatas are even more vivid and radiant, which can be called a masterpiece of mural painting. It's a pity that photography is not allowed in the tower, and no photos are left.
At the entrance, there is also a painting of the Vajra Gate God. Fierce and vicious, it is daunting. At the four corners of the Tathagata lotus seat, there are also warriors. It seems to be struggling to lift the heavy rosette.
There are also three pictures of "providing women" and "providing people" on the windward boards of the lintels of the south and north gates of the pagoda. These are the three princes and three queens of the Xiao family in Yingzhou. Although it's a long time ago, you can still see the elegant demeanor of the Xiao family's dignitaries.
The photos above were taken during my last visit.
The current wooden tower, because it is leaning day by day, can no longer bear the burden of tourists climbing the tower, so only the first floor can be visited. And when we came here ten years ago, we went up to the third floor. An excerpt of a written record and photos at that time is used to make up for the lack of improvement:
After reading the first floor, climb up the stairs to the second floor. The second floor is a dark floor. Continue to climb the stairs and come to the third floor.
There is a square altar in the center of the third floor, on which one Buddha, two Bodhisattvas and two attendants are molded. The statue is slightly damaged and the color has fallen off, but the Buddha is still a Buddha.
Here you can see the inner and outer ring columns, diagonal braces and various wooden components. The northwestern column of the tower leans heavily inward. This is because a shell hit the third floor during the Jiang Fengyan war in 1926, causing the third floor to lean to the right. Oddly enough to go up a few floors and still maintain integrity. However, in order to ensure safety, visitors can only go up to the third floor, and they are not allowed to go up to the upper floors.
Get down from the tower and go back to the ground floor. There are doors on the north and south of the ground floor. Going out from the north gate, you will arrive at the backyard of Fogong Temple.
There is another wall in the backyard, with a vertical flower door in the middle, and the inscription "The First Scene" on the forehead, I don't know where to start. Two "Buddha" characters are written on the walls on both sides. All looked new.
In the middle of the courtyard is the Daxiong Hall. The main hall is built in the Qing Dynasty, with five rooms and a wide surface, resting on the top of the mountain. Because time is tight and I have to go to Datong, I can only look at it quickly, then walk to the parking lot, get in the car and leave Ying County.
The advantage of chartering a car is to save time, driving all the way, you will arrive in Datong in two hours.
