Pagoda of Fogong Temple (Yingxian Wooden Pagoda)

The Pagoda of Fogong Temple in Ying County, Shanxi, is the oldest fully wooden pagoda still standing in China — which is why the whole country simply calls it the Muta, the Timber Pagoda. It was built in 1056 under Emperor Daozong of the Liao dynasty, and it has stood for almost a thousand years, riding out earthquakes that shook the region repeatedly in its first decades. A plaque bearing the calligraphy of the Ming Zhengde emperor calls it a wonder of the world.

It rises 67.31 metres on an octagonal plan, from a four-metre stone platform to a ten-metre spire. From outside it shows five storeys, each with its eaves and balcony, but hidden between them are four mezzanine levels, so that inside there are nine. The whole structure is held together without a single nail: its builders used some fifty-four different kinds of brackets — the interlocking dougong that spread the weight of the roofs — making the pagoda a textbook of Chinese timber engineering. On the ground floor sits a gigantic statue of the Shakyamuni Buddha, and every floor has its own carved ceiling caisson; from the windows on eight sides the view runs to Mount Heng and the Sanggan River.

The pagoda also turned out to be a treasury. During repairs in 1974, a tooth relic of the Buddha was found hidden inside a statue on the fourth level, together with Liao-dynasty scriptures: twelve scrolls of the Liao Tripitaka and dozens of printed and handwritten sutras, one of them over 33 metres long. The tower still bears scars from bullets fired during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It has been on China's tentative list for the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2013.

Getting there

The pagoda stands in Ying County, in the Shuozhou prefecture of northern Shanxi, about 70 km south of Datong. Buses run to Ying County from Datong's South bus station in about 1.5–2 hours, and a tourist bus connects Datong's old city to the pagoda in around 75 minutes. Shuozhou Zirun Airport (SZH) is about 53 km away.