Yinchuan｜Chengtian Temple Pagoda, one of the three major Buddhist holy sites in Western Xia, a thousand-year-old pagoda

🚗 Chengtian Temple Pagoda, also known as the West Pagoda, is located at No. 76, Jinning South Street, Xingqing District, Yinchuan City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Chengtian Temple Pagoda is an octagonal eleven-story pavilion-style brick pagoda with a total height of 64.5 meters. The tower is built on a square platform with a height of 2.6 meters and a side length of 26 meters.
It is the tallest brick tower among the more than one hundred ancient towers still existing in Ningxia. Chengtian Temple faces east and sits west, is about 200 meters long from east to west and about 100 meters wide from north to south. It is a traditional Chinese ancient building. There are buildings such as the Five Buddha Hall, Pagoda, Skanda Hall and Reclining Buddha Hall in the temple.

🚗The Chengtian Temple Pagoda was first built in the first year of Tianhu Chuisheng in the Western Xia Dynasty (1050). It was built by Mo Zang, the mother of the Western Xia Emperor Liang Zuo, to pray to Buddha to bless her son with a long dragon fortune. In the third year of Emperor Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1739), all pagodas and temples were destroyed by a major earthquake. In the 25th year of Emperor Jiaqing's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1820), the Chengtian Temple Pagoda was rebuilt. In the mid-1980s, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region renovated the Chengtian Temple Pagoda Courtyard.

🚗 The temple is very popular, with monks coming all the time, and often visited by "Eastern celebrities" and "Western sages". It is a famous Buddhist holy place in Western Xia, and is as famous as the Huguo Temple in Liangzhou (Wuwei) and the Reclining Buddha Temple in Ganzhou (Zhangye) at that time, and is known as the three major Buddhist resorts in Western Xia. I happened to live nearby and saw it several times. Friends who are interested in Buddhism or Xixia history can come and see it.

Post by vance_3647 | Aug 13, 2024