On March 27, 2018, Tuesday, sunny, at 7:35 in the morning, our bus passed the Datong toll gate and went to Ying County. It takes less than an hour to reach Yingxian parking lot. When you come here, you can immediately feel the influence of Yingxian Wooden Pagoda. We saw that around the Buddhist temple where the wooden pagoda is located, there are all antique buildings, and all of them are shops with the wooden pagoda as the banner. Obviously, the wooden pagoda is a golden signboard for the development of local economy in Ying County.





Because of the wooden pagoda, Ying County is known to the world. In order to stimulate the tourism economy, it is natural to build supporting scenic spots for the wooden pagoda.

Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is famous all over the world because it is a wooden tower that has been relatively well preserved for more than 900 years. According to reports, this multi-layered tower has never used a single nail.

The full name of the Sakyamuni Pagoda is Fogong Temple. The Sakyamuni Pagoda is located in the Fogong Temple in the northwest of Yingxian County, Shuozhou City, Shanxi Province. It is commonly known as Yingxian Wooden Pagoda. This wooden pagoda was first built in the second year of Liao Qingning (1056 A.D.) and completed in the sixth year of Jin Mingchang (1195 A.D.). It is the tallest and oldest wooden tower building in China and a national key cultural relic protection unit. . Together with the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it is also known as the "three strange towers in the world". A new female statue was added in front of the wooden pagoda. According to reports, this statue was built in memory of Empress Dowager Xiao. The statue is covered in red, which is very eye-catching. In this regard, I personally think that it is unnecessary to erect the statue of Empress Dowager Xiao in front of the ancient wooden pagoda. One is that the colors are extremely discordant; the other is that Empress Dowager Xiao only needs to write a stroke in the construction introduction of the wooden pagoda, and there is really no need to erect a monument for her. She believed in Buddhism, but because of her status, she did not hesitate to build a private pagoda for her. What she has done is nothing more than a kind of extravagance of the feudal rulers. Why is it necessary to erect a statue of her?

Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is the only pagoda with an all-wooden structure in China today. It is the private pagoda of Empress Dowager Xiao, and it has been more than 960 years ago. Although the wooden pagoda has survived wind and rain, it gradually tilted to the right due to the damage caused by the earthquake. In order to protect this historical wooden tower, except for the first floor, the wooden tower is no longer open to the public.

For historical relics, if it is closed for protection, I fully support it. For example, the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda (except the first floor) is not open, and you can only watch it in the yard if you buy a ticket. I have no objection.

We surrounded the wooden tower and admired this pure wooden historical tower from different angles.

Each floor has a plaque

There are still some historical relics preserved in the yard

There is a stone tablet in the courtyard with "Yong'an" written on it. I don't know where it was placed back then, but the word "Yong'an" will never go out of style in my opinion. China has a long history of thousands of years, and the general trend is to demand the stability of the country.

Yingxian Wooden Pagoda attracts tourists from home and abroad only because of its special structure. The appearance is shocking, so any Bodhisattvas in the yard are already insignificant.

Because we can only visit the exterior of the wooden tower, we only stayed here for about an hour. At 9:46, leave the Wooden Pagoda Scenic Area and go straight to Yanmen Pass, which is famous for its majestic and precipitous.

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