Travel Guide - Small Wild Goose Pagoda
Posted by ugfanfan on September 28th, 2014
With an area of 16.3 hectares, the Small Wild Goose Pagoda Scenic Area, which consist of the Xian Museum and Small Wild Goose Pagoda, is located in the southern suburb of Xian, about 2 kilometers to the south of the City Wall. Nowadays, this scenic area has become a wonderful leisure site for the appreciation of cultural relics, sightseeing and entertainment.
Xian Museum, the ancient Jianfu Temple built in the year 684 A.D during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), displays over 2,000 precious historical relics. In the central axis, there locate the White-Clothing Pavilion, the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, the Sutra Depository, the Mahavira Hall (Daxiongbaodian) and the Maitreya Pavilion in the Jianfu Temple, along with verdant trees, grass and beautiful flowers. Moreover, beside the museum sits a big circular square and an artificial lake with two stone arch bridges. More convenient is the scenic area has an intelligent guide system which offers an audio guide device to visitors. When visitors come to a scenic spot, the device will automatically give a detailed explanation in Chinese and other languages versions, also a version to children. The deposit of this device is CNY 100.
The Small Wild Goose Pagoda, which was built in the year 707 A.D during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), has dainty and exquisite appearance, which is very different with Big Wild Goose Pagoda. With 43.38 meters high, this multi-eave brick pagoda is thirteen stories tall, rising skyward in an elegant spindle shape. Above the ground floor, the height of each storey diminishes, rendering a graceful curve to the contour. Multi-eaves are made by overlapping bricks which curve inward, a characteristic of the Tang Dynasty construction. The ground floor has arched doors facing north and south; the other floors have arched windows instead. The fine drawings on the doors reflect the artistic style prevailing in the Tang Dynasty. Inside, a narrow wooden stairway winds its way to the top of the pagoda.
As the construction of the pagoda, it is a wonder. Because Xian is located in an area where the earthquakes sometimes occur, and after so many earthquakes, only the pinnacle and the two upper floors (the original pagoda had fifteen stories) have been damaged. Remarkably, cracks in the pagoda which occurred during earthquakes have been closed by quakes that came later. The pagoda base is made from packed earth in the shape of a hemisphere. In case of an earthquake, the pressure can be evenly divided, thus the pagoda has remained standing after over seventy earthquakes.
Jianfu Temple is well known for its 3.5 meters high giant iron bell, which makes a magnificent clear sound that can be heard more than three miles away. The iron bell has a stunning 10 tons in weight.
The Small Wild Goose Pagoda Scenic Area, with its brand-new appearance, welcomes tourists from both home and abroad.
Grace Fan works for a tour agency, chinatourdotcom offering a very wide range of China travel service like China panda tours, China themed tours,last minute China travel deals, Yunnan tours, China day tours, China city tours, Tibet Travel, and China Sichuan Tours etc...
