The stone tower of Kaiyuan Temple in Quanzhou, Fujian Province is also called the East West Tower of Kaiyuan Temple.
The East West Pagoda of Kaiyuan Temple is the earliest existing stone pagoda in China and the treasure of ancient temples in China. It can be seen from the scale, form and carving technology of the stone pagoda that China's stone carving technology can be said to be absolutely exquisite. Such a tall and exquisite stone pagoda has been carved by hand for the longest time and is so well preserved. It can be seen that the carving technology of Hui 'an stone carving in the stone carving industry can be witnessed from the four stone pagodas in China-the East West Pagoda of Kaiyuan Temple.
The twin towers are all made of stone, imitating wooden pavilions, all octagonal, with five floors, almost the same shape, but slightly different in height and arch. The west tower is 44.06 meters high and the east tower is 48.24 meters high. The abutment is a flat and wide base of Mount Sumi, with many carvings on it, a plane octagon, four front steps, and a simple stone fence around the base.
Historical evolution of the East West Pagoda of Kaiyuan Temple
Zhenguo Pagoda was built in the sixth year of Tang Xiantong (AD 865) and is a wooden pagoda. In the third year of Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1227), Baoqing became a brick tower. From the second year of Jiaxi to the tenth year of Chunyou (A.D. 1238-1250), it was changed into an existing octagonal five-story pavilion-like granite tower. Renshou Pagoda is a wooden pagoda built in the second year of the Five Dynasties Liang Dynasty (AD 9 16).
During the Xichun period in the Southern Song Dynasty (A.D.1174-1189), it was easy to be a brick tower; From the first year of Shaoding to the first year of Jiaxi (A.D. 1228-1237), it was changed to the existing octagonal five-story pavilion-like granite tower. Both towers are in the shape of Xumi Village, with four doors and four niches on each floor, and the positions of the door niches are interchanged layer by layer.
There is a flat handrail outside, and visitors can look around the tower from a distance. There is a brake at the top of the tower, and the tip of the brake is high enough to support the Australian steel hoist shining in the sun. Eight chains are obliquely tied to eight corner ridges from the upper plate of the tower gate, and there are forty small copper bells hanging under each corner ridge. The center of the tower is an octagonal solid body, and each floor has stairs for tourists to go up and down.
On both sides of the door niches on each floor of the tower, there are 80 reliefs, such as samurai, heavenly king, King Kong and Lohan, which are different in expression and lifelike. There are thirty-nine blue stone relief Buddhist biographies at the waist of the tower. Stories are mostly based on Buddhist scriptures and ancient Indian folk myths and legends, and then expressed by painting and sculpture, which is more vivid, exquisite and precious.