The Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, properly the Sakyamuni Pagoda of Fogong Temple, stands in Ying County in the prefecture of Shuozhou. It is the oldest surviving wooden pagoda in China. The plan is an octagon 30.27 metres across; five storeys show outside and step inward as they rise, and each of the first four contains a hidden storey, so the inside climbs through nine levels. The whole frame reaches 67.31 metres and is built entirely of timber, held by interlocking joints and fifty-four distinct types of bracket set. No contemporary document dates it: Ming local gazetteers place it in 1056, the second year of Qingning under the Liao, and a repair is recorded in 1195 under the Jin.
A timber pagoda of the Liao period read from the outside in: its octagonal plan, the fifty-four kinds of bracket set that hold the frame, the shelling of 1926, and a heritage status usually overstated.