The Feihong Pagoda, a Tower of Coloured Glaze

The pagoda stands just inside the gate of the upper temple, on the axis in front of the halls, so that a visitor passes it before reaching anything else. It was a work of fundraising: the monk Dalian collected the money, the building began in 1515, the tenth year of the Zhengde era, and it was finished in 1527, the sixth of Jiajing. That is a long campaign for a tower of this size, and it produced a structure meant to be seen from a distance as much as entered. Two great earthquakes have tested it since, the Guanzhong earthquake of 1556 and the Pingyang earthquake of 1695. The tower stood through both.

What makes the tower unusual is its skin. The plan is octagonal and the tower rises thirteen storeys to 47.6 metres, tapering as it goes, so that the silhouette is a cone rather than a column. Inside, the structure is brick and stone; outside, every storey is covered with glazed components and reliefs in red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and purple, and the eaves and bracket sets were fired in the same way. The effect is cumulative: each level adds another band of figures, another row of tiles, another colour. Because the colour is in glazed tile rather than in paint, it does not depend on light for its strength.

Seen from below, the tower is mostly eaves. Each of the thirteen storeys carries its own ring of tiled roof, and the rings step inward as they climb, so that the eye is drawn up a series of diminishing octagons. The glaze is brightest where the sun strikes the south face, and the small figures on the walls - the railings, deities, animals and bracket sets - are clear only at close range; from the courtyard they read as texture. The tower is the landmark of the upper temple, and the halls behind it are arranged around its presence. A visitor walks the axis, passes the gate and looks up before looking at anything else, which is what the builders intended.