Brief information on Wooden Pagoda Temple  

Located at the ancient pagoda square of Zhangye city, the Wooden Pagoda Temple was built in Northern Zhou Dynasty or earlier and was first called Longevity Temple. It is recorded that the pagoda was rebuilt in 582 A.D. during Sui, and 639 A.D. during Tang, and had been repaired for many times during Ming and Qing Dynasty. The pagoda we see today was built in 1926, regarded as one of the five elements pagodas of Zhangye city. (Metal, wood, water, fire and earth are the ’five elements’ in ancient Chinese philosophy and fortune-telling.). The pagoda is 32.8 meters high with nine stories and eight faces. On the eight corners of each storey is a wooden-caved dragon head with a bead in its mouth and a wind-bell under its neck. The pagoda is mainly made by wood with out eaves built in the pavilion style. Neither a nail nor rivet is used in the entire structure, but only the bracket set, crossbeam, upright column as the main architecture elements. There are doors, cloisters, hand rails, windows, lintels which were embedded with brick carved steles, and with stairs for people to climb up, on the top of it, one can get a panoramic view of the entire city.
Behind the pagoda, there is a pavilion named black pavilion. The present one was built at the end of Qing Dynasty with 5 rooms. It is also called Sutra Collection Pavilion, forming an entire ancient architectural complex with the pagoda together. 

*You can download the bilingual note to show it to a taxi driver or someone else to find your way to Wooden Pagoda Temple if you plan to visit Wooden Pagoda Temple and have language problems.

   

Hours:08:00-17:00
Location:Zhangye, Gansu Province