A Complete Picture of Nanjing’s Porcelain Pagoda 江南報恩寺琉璃寶塔全圖
“In Ancient Times” as they say, a splendid nine-storey pagoda stood on a hill just to the south of Nanjing. Set in the grounds of the Bao’en Temple and built from sparkling, multi-coloured glazed bricks, it was called the Liuli Ta (琉璃塔, something like “Jewel-Glazed Pagoda”), better-known in English as the Porcelain Pagoda, or the Porcelain Tower.
Two nineteenth-century woodblock prints of the Porcelain Pagoda, now mounted as scrolls
Recently I was lucky enough to be given two large woodblock prints of the pagoda, originally made as tourist souvenirs. The one on the left states that its printing block was cut by monks at the temple in the seventh year of the Jiaqing emperor (1803), while the yellow print with red overpainting was designed two years earlier by the Yuqing Studio (餘慶堂梓行). Of course, these blocks could have remained in use for decades afterwards, and there’s no way of telling when my prints were actually made – though as you’ll see below, most likely before 1856.
The huge chunk of text at the top of the white print is an exhortation to “attain enlightenment through Buddhist transformation” in the name of Amitabha, Buddha of the Pure Land. The four large characters at the top of the yellow one read “Peace and Protection for the Home” (鎮宅平安), turning the print into a talisman.
The main text either side of the pagoda differs between the two prints, but both give an account of its history and are possibly derived from a now-vanished stone tablet set up in the temple grounds in 1530. A temple and pagoda had occupied the site since at least the third century, though they were destroyed and rebuilt on many occasions. Then in 1412 the Ming emperor Yongle began a huge reconstruction of the complex in honour of his mother; the work involved a multitude of military artisans and craftsmen, cost 2,485,484 ounces of silver and took nineteen years to finish – by which time Yongle himself had died.
Completed by his successor Xuande in 1431, its foundations stabilised by a thick bed of compressed charcoal, the pagoda rose 79 metres from its octagonal base to the tip of its gilded spire. Below the spire was an immense bronze bowl in which were placed five pearls (to ward off demons, flooding, fire, wind and dust), a forty-ounce lump of gold, a thousand ounces of silver, sixty kilos of tea, a cache of valuable medicines and gems, strings of cash coins and a small library of Buddhist scriptures.
Nine iron chains suspended 72 bells from the spire, with another 81 in total hanging from the corners of the eaves on each floor. At night the outside of the pagoda was lit by 128 lanterns, with a further twelve (made of glass) illuminating the interior: “Their light penetrates amid all men, good and bad; they brighten the very depths and forever remove calamity out of the way”.
Early print of Bao’en Temple and the pagoda (with only six stories showing) from 金陵图咏, 1623
The earliest picture of the tower I could find dates to 1623 and comes from An Illustrated Description of Jinling (金陵图咏; Jinling is an old name for Nanjing). A Dutch expedition to China under Johan Nieuhof saw the pagoda just a few decades later in 1656; Nieuhof supplied the first foreign description of it in An Embassy Sent by the East India Company of the United Provinces to the Grand Tartar Cham or Emperor of China, which made the tower famous in Europe after his book was translated into English and French:
“In the middle of the plain stands a high steeple or tower made of porcelain, which far exceeds all other workmanship of the Chinese in cost and skill, by which the Chinese have declared to the world, the rare ingenuity of their artists in former ages. The tower has nine [levels], and one hundred eighty four steps to the top ... The outside is all glazed over and painted with several colours, such as green, red and yellow... Round about all the corners of the galleries, hang little bells, which makes a very pretty noise when the wind jangles them.”
Engraving from a French edition of Niuehof’s book - with all nine stories
China later closed off to the outside world, and it was another two centuries before anyone could add much to Nieuhof’s account. Then in 1840 came the First Opium War, which ended with Britain forcing China open to foreign trade and exploration under the Treaty of Nanking. Stationed outside the city during negotiations in 1842, several British officers took time to visit the pagoda, including Royal Navy commander Graville Loch:
“It is an octagonal building of nine stories, rising to the height of 261 feet; bright with many-coloured porcelain, which throws off a glittering light like the reflected rays from gems; it is in perfect preservation ... We entered the pagoda by the principal door in front of the flight of steps and found ourselves in an extensive octagonal corridor surrounding the body of the building, which is square and elaborately ornamented with figures of the Buddha faith in bas relief - the whole profusely gilt; each storey contained a shrine with the universal idol, the sitting figure of “the Queen of Heaven.”
A single door under the niche, in which the principal deity was placed, leads into a square chamber in the shaft of the building, occupied by another image. The walls are all lined with square porcelain tiles, each separate one embossed with a small device in the centre; those upon the ground floor are entirely covered with gilding. The others of the eight upper stories differ, by having a black edging round the gilded device, which has a good effect; the concluding step of each storey is of stone, the flooring and stairs of wood.”
For his part, aide-de-camp Arthur Cunynghame recalled the impressive view from the upper storey north over the gigantic city, its 35-kilometre-long stone wall encircling a population estimated at a million by one of the temple’s monks. The pagoda’s multi-coloured tiles were so expertly joined that at a distance it appeared to be made in one piece. “Altogether it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, differing so totally from anything which I previously seen or met with in any other country I have visited... The more we examined it the more pleasure had we in doing so.”
In 1852 the Reverend Dr. C. Taylor, an American Methodist visiting Nanjing in disguise, gave a detailed description of the pagoda to Shanghai’s authoritative English-language newspaper, the North China Herald:
[Despite the name “Porcelain Pagoda”] “in reality but a comparatively small portion of it is white. Green is the predominant colour, from the fact that the curved tiles of its projecting roofs are all of this colour, while the wood-work supporting these roofs, is of the most substantial character, in the peculiar style of Chinese architecture, curiously wrought and richly painted in various colours. The body or shaft of the edifice is built of large, well burnt brick, and on the exterior surface they are red, yellow, green, and white. The bricks and tiles are of very fine clay and highly glazed, so that the tower presents a most gay and beautiful appearance which is greatly heightened when seen in the reflected sunlight...
After the first or ground storey, all the others are quadrangular on the inside, instead of conforming to the octagonal exterior. On each face in an arched opening in which one can stand, and look out upon the surrounding scenery; but a wooden grating prevents you from stepping out upon the galleries, which are not provided with balustrades. The inner wall of each storey are formed of black, polished tiles, a foot square, on each of which an image of Buddha is moulded in bas-relief, and is richly gilt. There are, on average, more than two hundred of these images in each storey, giving an aggregate of nearly two thousand in all. A steep staircase on one side of each square apartment leads to the one above, and by this means you may reach the top, from which a magnificent panorama is seen spread out before you...
A fine spacious temple, covered with yellow, glazed tiles and filled with gilded idols, stands at the foot of the Pagoda, and in the same extensive enclosure. Here we purchased of a priest a native [wood]cut, representing the Tower”.
The pagoda suffered some damage over the centuries. In 1526, during Jiajing’s reign, “the god of thunder drove poisonous reptiles to this pagoda and immediately three sides of it were damaged. The strength of the god of thunder was very great, but Buddha’s resources are infinite, therefore the whole edifice was not destroyed.” Restorations took two years. In 1842 Cunynghame admitted scratching graffiti into the walls – as had many Chinese visitors before him – while consular interpreter William Raymond Gingell reported that British troops stationed at Nanjing had “sadly and wantonly injured both its interior and exterior” to prise off souvenir tiles.
In 1850 a small peasant revolt in distant Guangxi province signalled the beginnings of the Taiping Uprising: lasting fourteen years and spiralling into the largest civil war in world history, it left twenty million people dead and eastern China in ruins. By early March 1853 the vast Taiping army was laying siege to Nanjing; up on their hill, Bao’en Temple and the pagoda had a commanding view of the city’s southern suburbs. According to scholar Zhang Runan's Chronicle of Jinling Province’s Troubles (张汝南; 金陵省难纪略), the rebels:
“ran across the suspension bridge, heading straight to the city, breaking down houses and setting fire to the city gates. The people on the city wall poured water and threw stones, and the battle lasted for several hours. Other rebels also fired rockets... [and] transported cannons from the Cangsheng Temple and placed them on the first floor of the Bao’en Temple to bombard the city.”
Map showing Nanjing under siege from the Taipings, with Bao’en Temple and Pagoda on their hill outside the south gate
The Taipings captured Nanjing on 19 March and took the city as their capital. Their leader, Hong Xiuquan, was a Christian convert of sorts and despised what he saw as Chinese religion’s “pagan idolatry”; under his orders Bao’en Temple and the pagoda were ransacked and their statuary destroyed. Three United States Navy officers from the Susquehanna visited in late May 1854, confirming that the pagoda was “still an object of very great interest, from its age and appearance, though comparatively in ruins, for when the City was taken by the Rebels the interior of the Tower was burned and defaced, and the lower part was so filled with rubbish that an entrance is impossible.”
Then came the end. In 1856 the Porcelain Pagoda was totally destroyed during a power struggle between rival Taiping factions led by the “Northern King” Wei Changhui, Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai, three of the rebellion’s longest-serving generals. Yang attempted a coup, but he and his followers were slaughtered by Wei’s forces who then turned on Shi, killing his family. Shi escaped and persuaded the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to have Wei assassinated.
As reported in the North China Herald on 17 January 1857, the pagoda was demolished “under the apprehension that it might be taken possession of by one of the other leaders, fortified, and directed against the city, which it commands.” Li Gui, a Nanjing resident during Taiping rule, wrote in his Jinling Military Summary (李圭; 金陵兵事彙略): "In the first three years, the rebels set fire to [the pagoda] and burned it, leaving it empty but not destroyed. This year, they dug deep into the foundation of the tower and buried gunpowder. With a bang, there was a thunderbolt, and it turned into nothing.” It’s unclear which Taiping faction was actually responsible.
Stereograph of the Porcelain Pagoda’s bronze bowl and rubble, taken by China photographer John Thomson in 1871. City walls in the background.
Imperial forces finally defeated the Taipings and retook Nanjing in 1864. The following year the site of the Bao’en Temple was chosen for the new Nanking Arsenal; a photo of the area from 1871 shows the vast bronze bowl which once sat atop of the pagoda amongst a sea of rubble. The bowl was later mounted on a plinth and seems to have survived up until the Japanese occupation of Nanjing during WWII.
In 1933 Carl Crow wrote in his Handbook for China: “Outside the north gate of the city lies the only remaining remnant of the great Porcelain Pagoda. It is the bronze cupola of the pagoda, now overturned, forming a basin... A few tiles from this pagoda are treasured by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.” A few years later historian Zhang Huiyi included more photos of the bowl, the sixteenth-century stone tablet (whose inscription had by then almost completely worn away) and fragments of glazed bricks in his Chronicle of Jinling’s Da Bao’en Temple Pagoda (金陵大报恩寺塔志).
A new version of the pagoda, privately funded by a Chinese businessman, was completed in 2015.
Many thanks to Christer von der Burg
Sources
Crow, Carl Handbook for China (Kelly and Walsh 1933)
Cunynghame, Arthur An Aide-De-Camp’s Recollections of Service In China (Saunders and Otley 1844)
Gingell, William Raymond Translations. Forms of Ceremonial &c on the Death of the Dowager Queen and of the Emperor Taoukwong: Also an Account of the Celebrated Porcelain Tower of Nanking (Longman and Co. 1852)
Li Gui 金陵兵事彙略 (Jinling Military Summary, 1888; pdf downloaded from Wikimedia Commons)
Loch Granville The Closing Events of the Campaign in China (John Murray 1843)
Niuehof, Johan An Embassy Sent by the East India Company of the United Provinces to the Grand Tartar Cham or Emperor of China (translated by John Ogilvie 1669)
North China Herald 1850–1860
Zhang Huiyi 金陵大报恩寺塔志 (Chronicle of Jinling’s Da Bao’en Temple Pagoda, 1937; pdf downloaded from Wikimedia Commons; also online at https://taiwanebook.ncl.edu.tw/en/book/NCL-9900010399/reader)
Zhang Runan 金陵省难纪略 (Chronicle of Jinling Province’s Troubles, 1891; online at https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=2864037&remap=gb)
金陵梵刹志 (Records of Buddhist Temples in Jinling, 1607; online at https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=524937&remap=gb)
金陵图咏 (An Illustrated Description of Jinling, 1623; pdf downloaded from Wikimedia Commons; also online at https://www.loc.gov/item/2014514105)
John Thomson photo in the Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hzemwgcq/images?id=buk7e9k7
1850s Map of Nanjing under siege 清軍圍攻金陵城圖 from https://digitalatlas.asdc.sinica.edu.tw/digitalatlasen/map_detail.jsp?id=A103000130