Situated on Mount Longshan one kilometer east of the county town of Zhongxiang, it is said to have been built in 880 in the Tang Dynasty. It was destroyed later, but reconstructed in 1389 in the Ming Dynasty. The present pagoda is a Ming structure.
According to the history of ancient pagodas, literary-peak pagodas thrived in the Ming and Qing dynasties, mostly in the mid-Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty. But this dagoba was constructed in the early Ming Dynasty and is thus invaluable. Most such pagodas are multistoreyed; few are in other styles, particularly that of an inverted-bowl-style Lamaist dagoba. Wenfeng (writing style), wenxing (thriving literature), wenbi (style of writing) and other such pagodas were multistoreyed buildings that the Confucianists used to pray for good writing and they generally did not use stupas as a form of burial. Why Wenfeng Dagoba adopted the stupa style is still a question.
The octagonal pedestal is very high and is topped by the inverted-bowl-style main body. The steeple is very tall, accounting for more than half the total height of the dagoba. The main body of the steeple has twenty-one discs instead of the usual thirteen for Lamaist dagobas; its style is similar to that of some Burmese-style pagodas in the southern part of Yunnan Province. The canopy on the steeple is made of three discs, each engraved with the Chinese character yuan. Above the canopy an iron halberd pierces the sky. The entire steeple is twenty-six meters high. The structure of the whole dagoba is unique, a masterpiece in terms of both structure and art.
