This pagoda, located on a slope of Zhongtiao Mountains some ten kilometers southwest of the county town of Yongii, is said to have been construct- ed in 1586 during the reign of Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty.
The pagoda is octagonal, each side on the ground floor is 4.41 meters long. The room on the first storey has a dome ceiling with a small hole opening to the upper floor, but most of the time the hole was covered by a board and there were no stairs or ladder for people to ascend. Along the inside walls winding staircases were installed to connect the rooms on each storey. There probably used to be floor slabs for placing statues of Buddha and other objects, but they are not there anymore.
The pagoda has thirteen storeys on the exterior. There is a door on the sides facing south, north, west and east, and a window on each of the other four sides. The thirteen pent roofs are made of brick and project over the body of each storey. Those on the second and third levels extend more than a meter from the main body of the pagoda. They are examples of particularly deep eaves.
The steeple has a special form. The base is a big octagonal brick structure in the shape of an inverted basin with eaves and a five-tier cone-shaped pedestal. The body of the steeple is shaped like an inverted octagonal funnel covered by an umbrella. The top of the steeple is composed of three inverted funnel-shaped octagonal objects crowned by a precious bead. The main part of the steeple is made of copper, which shines like gold in sunlight. This kind of structure is also rare among ancient pagodas.
The most outstanding feature of this pagoda is that all the bricks used in the construction were so polished and standardized that no cement or any other kind of filling was needed for the seams. This method of construction put a high demand on the quality of the building materials and the technology of construction. Some bullet holes on the upper levels of the pagoda were left by bombardments of Japanese invaders. Part of the eaves and body were also damaged during the war, but the pagoda on the whole stood firm. This also proved its strong structure.
