Leifeng Pagoda, formerly known as Huangfei Pagoda, is also known as Huangfei Pagoda, Wangfei Pagoda and Huangpi Pagoda in literature and folk. It was originally a Buddhist pagoda (merit pagoda), which was built by Qian Chu, King of wuyue in the Five Dynasties. It is located in front of Leifeng, Jingci Temple, South Bank of Xihu District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China, and confronts Baokui Tower on Baoshi Mountain on the North Bank. The original tower collapsed at 1924, leaving only ruins. In 2002, a new tower was rebuilt on the original site. As the sun sets, the afterglow reflects Leifeng Tower, forming a famous sunset landscape of Leifeng, which is one of the ten scenic spots in the West Lake. Leifeng Pagoda is also famous for being the place where the legendary White Snake was suppressed by France and Shanghai.
The Leifeng Pagoda was built by Qian Chu, King of wuyue in the Five Dynasties. It was founded in the fifth year of Kaibao in the Northern Song Dynasty (972) and completed in the second year of Taiping Xingguo (977). There is a relic of Sakyamuni Buddha's "Buddha hair tied in a bun" in the tower, which is called Xiguan brick tower when it is completed. After the completion, it was named "Emperor Princess Tower" to commemorate Sun Fei, and to thank the Song Dynasty for sealing and mourning her (the former Chu princess Sun Fei was killed). The name of Leifeng Tower originated from the location of Leifeng Tower. Leifeng Mountain is the highest peak in Zhao Xi and the remaining vein of Nanping Mountain. According to the Southern Song Dynasty's Annals of Spring Tour in Lin 'an, it was named after Lei Jiu, a native of the county. In addition, it is said that this mountain peak was originally called Zhongfeng or HSBC. Zhongfeng is surrounded by many mountains, and HSBC is named after the mountain. Later, because Hui and Lei have similar voices, they were mistaken for Lei Feng. , similar to the shape of a ray).
Leifeng Tower was originally a seven-story eight-faced brick and wood pavilion tower. Qian Chu originally planned to build a 13-story building, which was higher than thousands of feet, but it was changed to a 7-story building due to insufficient material strength. The Xuanhe period in the Northern Song Dynasty was destroyed by war, and it was rebuilt in the Southern Song Dynasty for 20 years and changed into a five-story tower. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the enemy besieged Hangzhou and set fire to the tower because they suspected there was an ambush in it. The wooden eaves gallery was burned, leaving only the brick tower, and its bricks were all burnt to ochre. At that time, it was widely rumored that the bricks of Leifeng Tower had the special functions of "exorcising evil spirits", "being suitable for men" and "benefiting silkworms", so citizens frequently went to steal and dig. In the 13th year of the Republic of China (1924), the brick tower of Leifeng Tower collapsed, leaving only ruins.
After the collapse of the old tower, local officials and gentry in Hangzhou raised funds for reconstruction. Later, architects Liang Sicheng and Yang Tingbao also proposed to rebuild Leifeng Tower. 1In July 1999, the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and the provincial government made a decision to rebuild Leifeng Tower and restore the landscape of Leifeng Zhao Xi. The new tower was completed on October 25th, 2002. The new tower of Leifeng Pagoda rebuilt in the original site covers the whole ancient pagoda site and becomes a landscape building with a protective cover and a tower.
Leifeng tower was originally a pavilion-style tower with brick and wood structure, with wooden eaves gallery (two steps, waist eaves, flat seats, railings, etc. ) Outside, there is a brick tower body inside, which can be boarded, and the stone carvings of Hua Yanjing are embedded in the tower wall. According to the photos taken during the Republic of China, the bottom of the original tower is about 12 meters high, and other floors are about 8 meters high, with a total height of about 50 meters. There is a cylindrical brick tower gate base at the top of the tower.
From 2000 to 200 1, Zhejiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology cleaned up and excavated the site of Leifeng Pagoda. The proven sites mainly include tower foundation, underground palace, remaining tower body and some peripheral buildings (monasteries, roads, etc.). ). Both the tower foundation and the tower body are equilateral octagons, and the tower foundation is a brick adobe platform at the outer edge, which is formed by leveling and transforming natural hills. Calculated from the outermost side, the length of each side is 17m, and the diameter of the opposite side is 4 1m, which is 1.2-2.5m higher than the ground. The base of this tower is made of stone. Because the terrain is high in the west and low in the east, there are two-story Sumitomo on the east and one-story Sumitomo on the west. On the east side are carved Sumitomo Mountain and Haitao, which symbolize the "938 Sea" of Buddhism. There are two steps between the outer edge of tower foundation and the base of tower body. Judging from the 24 limestone square columns unearthed at the outer edge of the tower foundation, each side of the original secondary step has four columns and three spans, and the open span and secondary span are about 5 meters wide and 5.8 meters deep. The tower has only the lowest floor, with an average remaining height of 3-5 meters. It is a sleeve-type cloister structure, which consists of an outer sleeve, a cloister, an inner sleeve and a tower room from outside to inside. Similar to Yunyan Temple Pagoda in Suzhou and Pagoda of Six Harmonies in Hangzhou, it is a typical pagoda in late wuyue. The outer wall of its outer sleeve is10m long and 25m in diameter, making it the largest pagoda in the five dynasties. The coat is 4.2 meters deep and has a door on each side. The staircase of the tower is located in the south gate, with the width of cloister 1.8-2.3 meters and the depth of the inner sleeve of 3.7 meters. The doors are separated and four doorways lead to the tower room. The tower is made of bricks, and the joints between bricks are bonded with yellow mud. The tower brick is rectangular, usually 37 in length, 18 in width and 6 cm in thickness. Inscriptions related to its origin and age are printed on one side of the mold. Some tower bricks are Tibetan scripture bricks, and one end is provided with a round hole with a depth of 10 cm and a diameter of 2.5 cm, which is used to store warp rolls. The underground palace is located directly below the tower ventricle, about 2.6 meters away from the floor of the tower ventricle. It was opened on March 1 1 2006. It is a brick vertical cave type (similar in structure to the underground palace of Wanfuta in Jinhua in the Northern Song Dynasty and Tianfengta in Ningbo in the Southern Song Dynasty), with an inner wall of 0.6 meters long and a depth of 0.72 meters. In the center of the underground palace is an iron relic letter.
The rebuilt Leifeng Pagoda is located on the site, designed by Guo Daigou and Lu Zhou of the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University. It is still a five-story and eight-sided pavilion tower with the style and volume of Southern Song Dynasty, but it adopts steel frame structure, and the main building components such as columns, buckets and tiles are all made of copper. The new tower consists of protective cover, tower body and tower gate, with a total height of 7 1.679 meters. The protective cover built to protect the ancient pagoda site is 9.7 meters high and is divided into upper and lower floors. Twenty-four inclined steel columns and horizontal steel beams are used to form a steel grid structure, forming a long-span column-free space (the column grid span is 48 meters), covering the site and supporting the upper tower. This tower is about 45 meters high. After the completion of the new tower, it will become the commanding height of the south line of the West Lake, and it can overlook the West Lake.
Panorama of Leifeng pagoda site
Simulation model of underground palace of Leifeng Tower
Leifeng tower new tower
Aerial photography of the new Leifeng Tower
During the excavation from 2000 to 200 1 year, archaeologists unearthed a large number of cultural relics from the tower site and the underground palace respectively, and now most of them are collected and exhibited in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum.
In addition to other sites in the underground palace, a total of 1 104 stone carvings were unearthed, all of which were remnants, and most of them were unearthed in the cloisters and doorways on the ground floor, including the Huayan Sutra of Dafang Guangfo (nearly 1000) and the Diamond Paramita Sutra (nearly 1000) In addition, there are pure silver Ashoka Pagoda 1 piece (disabled when unearthed, and later restored according to the gold-plated pure silver Ashoka Pagoda unearthed in the underground palace) and copper Ashoka Pagoda 1 piece (disabled), small stone Pagoda 1 piece, 7 gold-plated bronze statues and iron statues 1 piece. 2 pieces of brass cymbals, 2 pieces of copper lamps 1 piece, 2 pieces of silver ornaments, 0/00 pieces of kaiyuan Bao Tong/kloc, 0/0 pieces of Gan Yuan Chongbao/kloc-0. :40- 1 12
Cultural relics unearthed in Tazhong underground palace 5 1 group. These include 1 iron relic letter, 1 gold-plated pure silver Ashoka Tower, 1 gold-plated silver box, 1 lotus leaf pattern hollowed-out mandarin duck silver ornament, 1 round hollowed-out silver ornament, 3 silver armbands and 65438+. 1 jade coin, 1 jade turtle, 1 agate pendant, 1 agate bead, 1 gilded wooden frame, 1 lacquer bracelet, 1 bronze mirror, 1 glass bottle. In addition, 3,428 pieces of copper coins were found in the underground palace, dating from the fifth year of Emperor Wendi of the Western Han Dynasty (175 BC) to the first year of Stegosaurus in Song Taizu (960 BC). : 1 19- 180
Gold-plated pure silver Ashoka Tower and pure silver Ashoka Tower are the most important cultural relics in the site. Both towers are square, consisting of tower foundation, tower body, four plantain leaves, mountain flowers and tower brake. The tower is engraved with pictures of the Buddha's original story. The former is placed in the underground palace, and the tower is filled with gold containers and wrapped in thin gold sheets into coffins. Because the specific situation is unknown, there should be a Buddha bun in it. It is believed that the latter was originally placed in the Heavenly Palace, and the gourd-shaped golden vase was originally hung in the tower, which also contained 66 relics.
The sunset photo of Leifeng, also known as the sunset photo of Leifeng, the sunset photo of Leifeng and the west photo of Leifeng, refers to the landscape formed by the afterglow of Leifeng Tower when the sun sets, especially the decadent and old image presented by the ochre old tower, such as "Gem (Guan Bao Tower) looks like a beauty, Leifeng looks like an old woman" and "Leifeng Tower was destroyed by purple smoke and was down and out". This scene was first seen in Volume I of Yu Fang Sheng Lan in the Southern Song Dynasty, and it was called "the Land of Leifeng". In the thirty-eighth year of Emperor Kangxi in Qing Dynasty (1699), Emperor Kangxi named the Ten Scenes of Imperial Books "Leifeng Zhao Xi" and erected a tablet pavilion. As a cultural relic protection unit, the Zhao Xi of Leifeng Mountain, the ten scenic spots of the West Lake, consists of Zhao Xi, Leifeng Tower, Imperial Monument (rebuilt in recent years) and courtyard.
In the legend of the white snake that originated in the Song Dynasty, Leifeng Pagoda is the place where Fahai suppressed the white snake. This plot is based on the folklore that there are herring and white snake under the pagoda of West Lake. The earliest shaping story of the legend of White Snake is the White Snake Leifeng Pagoda in Yongzheng period.
The collapse of Leifeng Pagoda coincided with the New Culture Movement in China. Lu Xun published "The Tower of Leifeng Falls Down" and "On the Tower of Leifeng Falls Down", believing that it represents the old feudal system and feudal morality, and that the collapse of the Tower of Leifeng is a historical necessity, expressing the yearning for new social construction and innovation in the future. Xu Zhimo and Yu Pingbo wrote poems and articles respectively, expressing their regrets from the historical and cultural perspectives. The Collapse of Pagoda, an English autobiographical novel written by Zhang Ailing 1963, is similar to Lu Xun, and also represents the collapse of China's traditional social lifestyle and old values.
See: Zhejiang Cultural Relics Protection Unit.