Qinglin Temple Pagoda

Qinglin Temple Pagoda

Qinglin Temple Pagoda is located in the east of raoyangdian village, southwest of Zhengkou, Gucheng County, Hebei Province. The pagoda of Qinglin temple is built with green bricks, facing north and south. It is octagonal in plane, with a tower base at the bottom. The pagoda is six stories tall and is a pavilion type brick pagoda, with a total height of 35.67 meters and a construction area of 165.2 square meters. Its shape is straight and beautiful, the masonry is exquisite, and there are double tower eaves between each floor. There is a copper gourd tower brake on the top of the tower. The first floor is a tower foundation more than three meters high, with more than two floors. Each floor has a gate in the East, West, South and North. There are windows on the door, and the windows are equipped with lattice with diamond pattern, cloud pattern and sky lotus pattern. The flowers are exquisite and different. The eaves of the tower are 45 degree inclined arches. The inside of the tower is a combination of the through the heart type and the folding type inside the wall, which can reach the top of the tower. There are niches of different sizes on the four walls, such as Buddhist niches and lamp niches. The tower is exquisite, beautiful and unique. According to the inscription of the Guandi temple in raoyangdian, in the early Northern Song Dynasty, two surnames Rao and Yang opened a shop here, so it was named raoyangdian. On the inner wall of the pagoda, there are many poems written by tourists. One of them is a poem written by Wang Shijia, a minister and native of the county during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. The poem says: where can I build a floating picture? It's up in the clouds. At the top of the mountain, you can feel the cold of the stars. It is not difficult to see from the poem that even Wang Shijia of Ming Dynasty could not figure out the date of the tower's construction. However, in Wucheng county annals and Gucheng County annals published in the early period, Qinglin temple tower was regarded as a Tang Dynasty building. It was not until 1990 that Professor Zhang Yuhuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences made a field investigation on the Qinglin Temple Pagoda. According to the architectural style and characteristics of the pagoda, it was determined that it was built in the early Northern Song Dynasty. After the founding of the people's Republic of China, the tower was repaired twice in 1957 and 1976. On May 25, 2006, Qinglin pagoda, as an ancient building of Song Dynasty, was approved by the State Council to be listed in the Sixth Batch of national key cultural relics protection units.

Historical evolution

Qinglin Temple Pagoda was built in the Northern Song Dynasty, with a history of 1000 years. From the modeling point of view, it belongs to the type of flower tower. The important feature is that the upper part of the tower is decorated with various complicated flowers, which looks like a huge bouquet. This kind of pagoda was formed in the song, Liao and Jin Dynasties, and almost disappeared after the Yuan Dynasty. The total number of existing pagodas in China is only a dozen. In 1961, it was announced as a national key cultural relics protection unit by the State Council. Qinglin Temple Pagoda is an octagonal pavilion style flower pagoda, which consists of two parts. The main tower is a four story tower, standing in the middle, about 40.5 meters high. A small hexagonal pavilion shaped tower is built in each corner of the bottom floor to encircle the first and second floors of the main tower, with the main and secondary nestling. This shape also has the meaning of King Kong throne tower, which gives people the feeling that the shape of the whole tower is full of changes. Confused with errors and omission, the main body of the main tower is the essence of the whole tower. The flower shaped tower occupies about 1/3 of the whole. It engraving lions, elephants, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, animal heads and heavenly kings and so on, with eight octagonal vertical lines.

Architecture layout

Qinglin Temple Pagoda is 9-level and 8-sided, with a height of 40.58 meters. The front faces south, East, West, North and south, with an arched gate on each side. The tower is of pure brick structure, and its body, core column, inner corridor, steps and waist eaves are all made of brick. The four sides of each layer above the second floor of the tower are hidden in the shape of mullions and windows. Qingshou Temple twin towers, the bottom of the tower is nearly astringent waist eaves, two to eight floors are flat seat overlapping astringent waist eaves. From the second floor to the eighth floor, the outer wall is surrounded by a corridor inside, with octagonal tower core columns in the middle and brick steps inside. The entrance of the first floor is in the southwest, the second floor is in the south, the third floor is in the northwest, and the fourth floor is in the northeast. Up to the ninth floor, there are no brick columns and corridors. The interior is easy to be octagonal brick room, with octagonal algae top on it, and the upper floor is the Tasha. In the process of maintenance, it was found that from the seventh floor to the ninth floor and the tower brake on the top of the tower, a wooden brake rod with a diameter of about 40-50 cm passed through. At the same time, it was also found that from the second floor to the ninth floor, in the middle of the outer wall and two to three layers of bricks under the tower porch, there were parallel octagonal sleepers with a diameter of about 30-40 cm. Sleeper is a kind of steel bar, which is equivalent to today's steel bar. It strengthens the connection between the outer walls and between the outer wall and the tower core column, making the tower as a whole, greatly improving the "shear" capacity and seismic capacity of the brick tower in the plane. During the renovation and exploration of the tower, we also found a unique masonry Technology: the outer wall of the tower has a layer of lime mortar masonry, and the shell of glutinous rice juice lime mortar pointing, which is not combined with the internal brick masonry of the outer wall. It is like wearing a jacket on the tower, which is different from the construction method of brick towers in other areas. This method can effectively weaken the resonance of the tower in the event of earthquake, It can buffer and counteract the earthquake force.

Travel

Qinglin pagoda is attracting more and more tourists, which has played a positive role in promoting the socio-economic and cultural development of raoyangdian. Since 1994, there has been an endless stream of tourists who come here every day to study Buddhism or to travel. They have received countless Dharma learners from many countries in Asia, America and Europe, as well as from all provinces, cities and regions in China, and tourists are even more numerous.

The climate belongs to temperate continental seasonal climate. It is cold in winter and hot in summer. The annual temperature difference is large, and the seasonal distribution of precipitation is uneven. In the four seasons of the year, it is cold and snowy in winter, dry and windy in spring, hot and rainy in summer, sunny and moderate in autumn.

For self driving, Take Hengshui Zao highway to Zhengkou Town, Gucheng County, then turn southwest to Xingde highway, about 25 km to raoyangdian village.

Longitude: 115.83960723877

Latitude: 37.307510375977

Chinese PinYin : Qing Lin Si Ta