Spotlight Shines Anew on Legendary Pagoda

In the United States, white folded takeaway boxes stamped with a red pagoda motif have long been synonymous with Chinese food. They have frequently appeared in movies and TV shows.

Online speculation about whether the famous pagoda was a real place or not has put the Glazed Pagoda of the Great Bao’en Temple in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in the social media spotlight.

The image found on some of those cartons is that of the nine-story, 256-foot-tall edifice with its glazed facade, long considered a marvel in China and abroad.

“The tower was once a visual symbol through which the Western world understood China,” says Wang Wenxi, director of the Great Bao’en Temple Ruins Museum.

The building, once regarded as one of the seven wonders of the medieval world, inspired the design of the Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens in London and was featured in the 1839 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Garden of Paradise.

The Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, third emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), started the ambitious project in 1412 to show gratitude to his parents. Construction was completed in 1428, and the tower quickly became a popular tourist attraction. It remained so until it was destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) in 1856.

“Every piece of the facade was intricately designed, with extremely stringent firing requirements resulting in an even, flawless glaze,” says Zhang Yongyi, a culture scholar.

At night the whole pagoda was said to glow like a resplendent lantern, visible far across the city. It remained the tallest structure in Nanjing throughout the Ming Dynasty and most of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

When Europeans first laid eyes on it, they did not see glaze, but something closer to myth. In 1638 Alvaro Semedo, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary in China, likened it to ancient Roman architecture, mistaking its tiles for porcelain. The travel records of Johan Nieuhof, a Dutch traveler who was in China from 1655 to 1657, cemented its fame, making the “Porcelain Tower” an enduring symbol.

Although it was destroyed in conflict, the ruins still offer a glimpse of its former splendor.

In 2008 archaeologists excavating beneath the pagoda’s foundation discovered an underground palace. Inside were the Seven Treasures Pagoda of King Ashoka and, even more extraordinary, the skull relic of Shakyamuni, the holiest relic in Buddhism. In 2015 a modern tower about 305 feet tall was completed, incorporating the original ruins and paying deference to the tower’s historical importance.

“Restoring the glazed pagoda of the Ming Dynasty would require the original materials, artisanship and techniques, all of which are unavailable today,” says Wang, the museum director. The steel frame and ultra-white glass of the modern structure carry the load precisely above the fragile underground palace, protecting it completely from subsidence, she says.

“The public regret is not that the tower wasn’t rebuilt in its original form, but that this world wonder was destroyed by war. We are restoring not just the appearance of the pagoda, but also its significant historical meaning.”

Today the new tower still attracts visitors, albeit of a different kind.

Shauchenka Volha, a student from ‌Belarus‌ at Nanjing University of Science and Technology, recently posted online about her ascent of the tower. “The lift took me to the eighth floor, and the moment I stepped out, the whole of Nanjing was spread out before me.”