Giant Wild Goose Pagoda

The story

In 629 a young monk named Xuanzang slipped out of Chang'an against the emperor's ban and walked west to India, to find the Buddhist texts that Chinese monks could only guess at. He came back sixteen years later, in 645, with 657 texts, relics and statues, and was received by Emperor Taizong. In the new Temple of Great Maternal Grace, founded in 648 by the crown prince in memory of his mother, Xuanzang spent eleven years translating.

In 652 he asked to build a tower to keep the texts safe from fire, and carried bricks for it himself. The first tower, in Indian style, soon decayed; it was rebuilt in brick under the Empress Wu Zetian in 701–704, and encased again under the Ming (1368–1644). What stands today is seven storeys and about 64.5 metres high, the largest square brick pagoda of the Tang left in the world. Xuanzang's journey later became the novel "Journey to the West", with its monkey king, and that is how most of the world knows him.

Close by, with a page of its own: Xi'an City Wall.

What is here

The temple has one ticket; climbing the pagoda is a second ticket bought at its foot. The North and South Squares are free.

If you have one minute

At the south door of the pagoda

Look into the two niches on either side of the south door. Each holds a stone tablet of 653 carved in the hand of Chu Suiliang, the greatest calligrapher of his day. One is the emperor Taizong's preface praising Xuanzang's translations; the other is the record written by his son, the emperor Gaozong. They were set here when the pagoda was new.

Then step back and look up. Each storey is a little smaller than the one below, and the walls are marked with flat pilasters, as if a wooden building had been translated into brick.

Things people often get wrong

"The Tang pagoda you see is untouched." Its brick skin was added under the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), which is why it looks plainer than a Tang building. The Tang core is inside.

"Xuanzang is a character from a novel." He is a real person; the novel, written about nine hundred years later, added the monkey, the pig and the demons.

People who stood here

We searched Chinese sources first for this list, then English and Indian ones.

• Xuanzang (monk and traveller, about 602–664)He designed the pagoda, carried bricks for it, and translated in the temple for eleven years. Indian, Japanese and Korean readers know him as Genjō, Hyeonjang or Huen Tsang, and his account of India is still used by archaeologists there.
• Du Fu (poet, 712–770)In the autumn of 752 he climbed the pagoda with four other poets and wrote: "The high spire straddles the blue sky; the fierce wind never rests."
• Cen Shen (poet, about 715–770)On the same climb he wrote: "The pagoda's thrust is like a fountain welling up, alone and high, piercing the palaces of heaven."
• Gao Shi (poet, about 704–765)He was one of the five who climbed in 752, and wrote his own poem from the top.
• Bai Juyi (poet, 772–846)He passed the highest examination in 800 and, as was the custom, wrote his name at the pagoda. He boasted: "Where names are written beneath the Ci'en pagoda, of seventeen men I am the youngest."

Go deeper: six stops from the south square to the top7 stops · about 2 min to read

Allow two hours for the temple and the climb, and come back at night for the fountains. The stops go from south to north.

1. Xuanzang on the south square

A bronze Xuanzang strides out in front of the temple gate, staff in hand, robes blown back. Behind him, the pagoda he built.

2. The Temple of Great Maternal Grace

The Tang temple had nearly two thousand rooms. What you walk through is a Ming rebuilding on a part of it, with halls mostly of the Qing (1644–1912). The bell tower on the east holds a Ming iron bell. The temple is still a working monastery, the home of the Consciousness-Only school that Xuanzang founded.

3. The steles and the lintels

Besides the two tablets by Chu Suiliang at the south door, look at the stone lintels over the four doors. They are engraved with fine lines: Buddhas, and on the west lintel a whole Buddhist hall of the Tang (618–907), with its brackets and roof. With almost no Tang timber buildings left, drawings like this one have helped architectural historians know what Tang halls looked like.

4. Climbing the pagoda

A wooden stair winds up inside the brick shell. From the arched windows of the top storey you look north along the axis of Tang Chang'an toward the city wall, and south down the long avenue of the Great Tang All Day Mall.

5. Writing your name below the pagoda

From the eighth century, men who passed the highest examination came here in a group to write their names on the pagoda, a custom called "writing names at the Wild Goose Pagoda". It became a way of saying "to succeed". Bai Juyi was proud to be the youngest of his year.

6. The North Square and the fountains

North of the temple a long square of pools and terraces holds one of the largest musical fountains in Asia, with short shows several times a day and at night. Go at dusk, then walk south of the temple into the lit-up streets of the Great Tang All Day Mall.

The pagoda and the same years elsewhere

Xuanzang came home in 645. In the same year in Japan, the Taika reforms began, which would remake the Japanese state on the Tang model.