Pujiu Temple and the Story of the West Chamber

Yingying Pagoda is the one structure at Pujiu Temple that carries the whole story in its name. The temple stands near the site of the old city of Puzhou, in Yongji, and its written history begins in the Sui dynasty; when it was founded is not known. The main buildings seen today were restored after 1986, so the pagoda is what holds the place together visually. It began as a relic pagoda, a stupa built to hold Buddhist relics, and it was renamed for Cui Yingying, the heroine of the Romance of the Western Chamber. A name taken from a play is a strange thing for a stupa to carry, and it tells you where the temple's fame comes from.

The play behind that name was written by Wang Shifu in the Yuan dynasty, is set in the Tang, and is counted among China's most famous dramas: twenty-one acts in five parts, adapted from Yingying's Biography, a short story by Yuan Zhen. Its plot turns on a secret love affair between Zhang Sheng, a young scholar, and Cui Yingying, the daughter of a Tang chief minister. The two meet in a Buddhist monastery, where Yingying and her mother have halted with her father's coffin. It has been called China's most popular love comedy, the story of a couple who consummate their love without parental approval; before the marriage is agreed, Zhang Sheng must go to the capital and pass the civil service examination.

A monastery is the play's setting, and a monastery is what stands here; the link between the two was made by fame rather than by record. What the temple's own account offers is thin and firm: a first mention in the Sui, no founding date, main buildings restored after 1986, and one pagoda renamed for a fictional woman. Around it the ground is fuller. The Tang iron oxen of the Yellow River lie nearby, and the Stork Tower stands a short distance away at Puzhou. A visitor can hold the three in one afternoon: a story, a set of iron beasts, and a tower that a poem made famous.