Shanxi Tourism | In Wanrong, there's a Feiyun Tower, half of it piercing into the clouds

| In Wanrong, there's a Feiyun Tower, half of it piercing into the clouds. 📍Feiyun Tower is located inside Dongyue Temple in Wanrong County, Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province, and is a pure wooden structure, known as 'China's number one wooden tower'. 🔸Feiyun Tower is 23.19 meters tall, with densely packed dougong brackets, all joints are mortise and tenon, exquisitely intricate, and together with the Wooden Pagoda of Ying County, they are known as 'Southern Tower and Northern Pagoda'. The exterior of Feiyun Tower has three stories, but the interior actually has five levels, with a total height of about 23 meters. The floor plan is square, the middle level changes to a folded cross shape, surrounded by a corridor, the roof profile is varied; the third level's floor plan returns to a square, but the roof shape is similar to the middle level, topped with a cross-ridge roof. The various roof levels create the rich facade composition of Feiyun Tower. Although the tower is not large in volume, it has four layers of eaves, 12 triangular roof sides, 32 roof corners, and the wood surface is not painted, showing the natural color of the wood. The dougong brackets and structure of Feiyun Tower are extremely varied, with almost every level having a different form of upturned eaves and bracket sets. The decorative elements include dragon heads, rolling clouds, grasshopper heads, single floating clouds, etc., with upturned mouths in the shape of a qin (Chinese musical instrument) or ruyi (scepter), and the corner brackets are decorated with elephant trunks and dragon heads, rich in decorative interest. Feiyun Tower is the representative building within Dongyue Temple in Jiedian Town, Wanrong, and there is a local saying, 'Wanrong has a Jiedian Tower, half of it piercing into the sky'. ✨The exact founding year of Feiyun Tower is unknown, but records indicate that the tower already existed during the Tang Dynasty's Zhenguan era. The existing tower was rebuilt in the eleventh year of the Qianlong era of the Qing Dynasty, retaining the architectural style of the Yuan and Ming dynasties.