What is Pai Lou

Pai Lou is the unique landscape of Beijing's ancient city, and a unique Chinese architectural art and cultural carrier. There are 65 existing pagodas in Beijing from the Ming and Qing dynasties, including 6 glazed brick pagodas, 42 wooden pagodas and 17 stone pagodas. There are only six existing pagodas on the streets, namely, four pagodas on Guozijian Street, the glazed brick pagoda in front of Dongyue Temple on Shenlu Street outside Chaoyang Gate, and the pagoda in front of the East Palace Gate of Summer Palace. Nowadays, during some big celebrations, there are also temporary pagodas made of bamboo and wood.　In the streets of old Beijing, there were a lot of pagodas, the most famous and typical ones are Dongdan Pagoda, Xidan Pagoda, Dongsi Pagoda, Xisi Pagoda, East and West Chang'an Street Pagodas, Qianmen Five Pagodas and so on. These pagodas were mostly demolished in the 1950s because of the obstruction of traffic.　The pagodas already existed during the Zhou Dynasty, "Poetry - Chen Feng - Heng Men": "Under the Heng Men, you can perch late." The Book of Songs was compiled during the Spring and Autumn Period, roughly from the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, from which it can be deduced that the "Hengmen" had already appeared in the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period at the latest. What was the Hengmen? At that time, it was a structure with two pillars and a beam, which was called "Hengmen", which is the ancestor of what we now call "Pai Fang".　Paiwang, also known as the tabletops, was first seen in the Zhou Dynasty, initially used for the memorials of the festival and filial piety, and later in the gardens, temples, palaces, mausoleums and streets are built, Beijing is the city with the most Paiwang in China.　Beijing's bustling Zhengyangmen Street (also known as Qianmen Street), once stood one of the city's tallest and most majestic wooden structure of the Zhengyangmen Pagoda, commonly known as the "Five Pagodas". The name "Five-Palace Tower" originates from its architectural style of five rooms, six pillars and five floors. Five Pai Lou was built in the Ming Dynasty, but because of its wooden, in the Ming Wanli, Qing Qianlong, Daoguang, Tongzhi years, has suffered a number of fires, the largest fire is the 1900 Gengzi change, the Boxer Rebellion fire specializing in the sale of foreign medicines, "the old Deji", the fire spread to the five Pai Lou under the Zhengyangmen. It was later renovated and demolished in 1955. Today, only in old photos can you see the five-paiwanese pagoda's majesty.

Architectural features:

In fact, there is a significant difference between the pagoda and the pagoda, the pagoda does not have the structure of the "building", that is, there are no arches and roofs, while the pagoda has a roof, which has a greater atmosphere. But because they are used for recognition, commemoration, decoration, marking and orientation of a building in ancient times in China, and more built in the palace, temples, mausoleums, ancestral halls, Yamen and street intersections, etc., coupled with a long history of ordinary people on the "Square", "Building" The concept of unclear, so in the end the two become an interchangeable title.

Architectural role:

Generally speaking, the pagoda is nothing more than: as a decorative building; to increase the momentum of the main building; recognition, commemoration of someone or something; as a demarcation of the area of the streets and lanes and so on. Beijing has more pagodas than other cities, hundreds of years the capital of the country, Beijing's halls, temples, large complexes, as well as the need to commemorate and recognize the events and people relatively more, as decorative pagodas are also more. The Yuan Dynasty, the city was divided into 50 workshops, the Ming Dynasty, four cities (districts), 36 workshops, the Qing Dynasty, five cities (districts), workshops remain the same. This is one of the reasons why there are so many pagodas in Beijing.

Architectural form:

From the form of points, there are only two types of pagodas. One type is called the "sky-rocketing style", also known as the "columns out of the head" style. As the name suggests, this type of pagoda between the column is higher than the roof of the building. Another type is "not out of the head" type. The highest peak of this type of pagoda is the ridge of the building. If divided into more detailed, can be based on the number of rooms and the number of buildings of each pagoda. Whether the column out of the head or not, there are "a two columns", "three four columns", "five six columns" and other forms. The number of buildings on the top, there are one floor, three floors, five floors, seven floors, nine floors and other forms. In Beijing, the largest pagoda is "five six columns and eleven floors". Most of the pagodas within the palace are not out of the head style, while most of the pagodas on the street are sky-high style.

Architecture:

The pagoda consists of several parts

The first is called the base. The pagoda to stand there, it can not fall, it must have a seat. Second, there are columns. Pai Lou is relying on a few columns up, the columns to stand, there should be clamping rod stone. The column into a pole, the two sides of the stone clamp it. It's not the same as when we build a palace. Sometimes the palace is gone, but it has a stone mortar and pestle underneath, that is the foundation of the pillar. The pagoda is not like that, the pagoda is a stone on one side, clamped to this pole. Then there is a beam, what is a pagoda for, there is a square, there is a place for inscription, there is the roof of the building. The reason why this is called the building, called the pagoda, because it has a top, and the top is a symbol of the grade.　Yellow glazed tile pagoda highest grade. The upper side is three buildings, the lower side there are four buildings, we call this kind of pagoda as "seven floors, three openings, four columns, seven floors of the pagoda". There are seven floors, the highest is nine floors. The original also wanted to design a higher eleven buildings, more than it, so very rare in the country, the highest general feudal emperor to nine buildings.