Why Is Shanxi Considered the Most Scheming Place in China?

In fact, it is not people who are "scheming against each other," but these "old timbers."

"钩心斗角" (scheming) originates from Du Mu's "Ode to the Epang Palace,"

originally used to describe the ingenious and staggered layout of palace architecture.

Just how many variations can be crafted from an ordinary piece of wood?

On this question, no province in China has more authority to speak than Shanxi.

In "Black Myth: Wukong,"

Shanxi's "timber" has broken free from the constraints of dimensions and time,

becoming a Chinese symbol that astonishes the world.

The "old xīr" (locals) who have lived here for generations have built countless wonders with wood—

whether carved beams, painted pillars, or ornate brackets and painted rafters,

using intricate patterns to depict the majestic virtues of a life wandering the world.

The caisson ceiling is the focal point of the entire structure.

Fig.1/VCG, Fig.2 photo by Li Ping'an, Fig.3 photo by Ren Chao, Fig.4 photo by Logic Sheep Studio.

Or adorned with vibrant paintings and glazed tiles,

using extreme colors to portray the revered celestial constellations;

the ancients built temples with wood and enshrined clay statues within.

Photos by Ren Chao, Logic Sheep Studio.

They embellish countless villages and alleys in this "land of mountains and rivers," making Shanxi, which occupies only 1.63% of China's land area, a unique "museum of ancient architecture."

Only three and a half Tang Dynasty wooden structures remain nationwide,

while China has a total of about 600 "ancient" wooden structures predating the Ming Dynasty.

Among the 2,165 ancient buildings designated as national key cultural relics protection units,

Shanxi boasts 421, ranking first in the country;

Among the 263,885 ancient buildings recorded in the third national cultural relics census,

Shanxi holds 28,640, again the highest nationwide;

Shanxi is a well-deserved "museum of ancient architecture."

Even a single prefecture-level city in Shanxi preserves enough wooden ancient structures to surpass any other province.

For example, Jincheng City has 23 buildings from the Northern Song Dynasty, while the rest of the country combined has only 14.

Even a single county in Shanxi can claim unparalleled numbers of wooden ancient structures. Take Zhangzi County in Changzhi City, for instance, with 11 Jin Dynasty buildings—more than the total of 14 found elsewhere in the country.

The distribution of ancient buildings in the map is accurate only to the county level and does not represent specific locations.

Shanxi, often overlooked, hides China's most exquisite wooden treasures.

What does 7,400 tons of wood represent?

In weight, it is nearly equivalent to the metal framework of the Eiffel Tower.

If restored to trees, it would be enough to plant hundreds of acres of land, forming a veritable "forest."

With the utmost craftsmanship and 136 years of meticulous assembly, it could create an architectural marvel standing unshaken for 900 years:

"Its ethereal eaves spread like phoenix wings, facing the lush southern mountains afar."

The Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, built in the second year of the Liao Dynasty's Qingning era (1056),

is the tallest and oldest surviving wooden pagoda in the world.

On the boundless grasslands of northern China, the towering Yingxian Wooden Pagoda stands as the ultimate testament to wooden architecture's conquest of the sky.

The pagoda employs a double-layered tube structure, commonly used in modern skyscrapers, and its 67-meter height surpasses most residential buildings today.

During the 1935 restoration,

The inner walls of the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda were dismantled by local villagers on the grounds of being "not delicate enough and disrupting feng shui,"

resulting in catastrophic damage to its load-bearing structure.

Liang Sicheng called it "the greatest misfortune the pagoda has suffered in over 800 years."

Source/Li Qianlang, "Through Walls and Roofs," Design/Jiuyang

But the limits of wood go far beyond this.

Five hundred years before the completion of the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, the Yongning Temple Pagoda, standing 49 zhang (136 meters) tall—equivalent to a 45-story building—had already become the most magnificent skyline of Luoyang, the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty. "Exhausting the craftsmanship of wood and earth, pushing the limits of form," its eternally lit lanterns were clearly visible from a hundred li away, like the eternal longing for rain in the song "Fireworks Cool Down" at the Garam Temple.

Even today, the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda remains a towering presence.

The Linde Hall in the Tang Dynasty's Daming Palace, with a floor area of over 5,000 square meters, could host lavish banquets for 3,000 people, a true reflection of "the palaces of the nine heavens opening their gates, envoys from all nations bowing to the imperial crown."

Yet the wood cherished by ancient people was also notoriously delicate—vulnerable to water, fire, insects, and, most of all, human destruction. These unavoidable weaknesses made wooden structures inherently "short-lived." The Yongning Temple Pagoda was destroyed by lightning just 16 years after its completion, and the Daming Palace was reduced to ashes in the wars of the late Tang Dynasty.

Compared to Westerners who were obsessed with building stone houses, our ancestors were not fools. They were well aware that stone was far more durable than wood. Yet they stubbornly stuck to wood, unwavering for millennia.

Chinese wooden pillars share the same origins as Western stone columns, yet their styles are worlds apart.

This was not a compromise due to lack of materials or technology, as early as the mythical era contemporaneous with the pyramids, Chinese ancestors had already built the indestructible Shimao Stone City, standing for 4,000 years.

The ancients' thinking might seem romantically unfathomable: they believed wood possessed vitality. The spring bloom and autumn wither of trees mirrored the cycle of human life—birth, aging, sickness, and death. Dwellings built from wood thus naturally carried their own life force.

The partition doors and windows of the Amitabha Hall in Chongfu Temple, Shuozhou,

remain original artifacts from the Jin Dynasty over 800 years ago.

Wood has its limits. But some limits exist to be surpassed.

Every culture enamored with wood developed the technology of "mortise and tenon," an inevitability driven by the wheels of civilization, not unique to China. But only the Chinese refined this art to its zenith, creating an invention as great as Chinese characters:

(Dougong is often mistakenly written as "dougong," but the wood radical reveals its true nature.)

Before bricks were widely used for walls,

the walls of wooden structures bore almost no load-bearing function.

Each bracket set precisely distributes the weight of the roof,

transferring it accurately onto every load-bearing column,

thus creating the legend of "walls collapsing while the house stands firm."

Photo taken at Yongle Palace in Ruicheng. Photo by President Logic Sheep.

Dozens of square "dou" and bow-shaped "gong" interlock through mortise-and-tenon joints, constructing an exquisitely intricate load-bearing structure like Lego bricks. The Yingxian Wooden Pagoda alone boasts 240 such bracket sets.

If stone embodies a metallic, heavy "rigidity," then wood represents its corresponding "flexibility."

It is this extreme resilient "flexibility" that enabled the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda to withstand over 40 earthquakes and 200 cannon strikes over 900 years without collapsing.

In Tang Dynasty architecture, bracket sets could reach half the height of the columns,

but by the Ming and Qing Dynasties, they shrank to only about 13%.

The unadorned bracket sets support the iconic "grand roofs" of Chinese architecture, yet they can also achieve extreme opulence.

At the China Pavilion of the Shanghai World Expo, a splash of red derived from bracket-set structures became the most vivid highlight of the entire park.

The caisson ceiling refracts celestial visions like a kaleidoscope.

With advancing construction techniques, later generations began using sturdier brick-and-wood structures for exterior walls, diminishing the load-bearing function of bracket sets. They instead became extravagantly ornate artistic pieces.

The Feiyun Tower in Wanrong County, paired with Yingxian Pagoda as "Southern Tower and Northern Pagoda," showcases unparalleled craftsmanship. This "hundred-foot tower where one could pluck stars" abandoned practicality from its inception—unclimbable, it stands as a "perfect artwork to admire from afar."

"Wanrong has the Feiyun Tower, its top half piercing the heavens."

If we could return to when these ancient structures were built, their appearance would never be as "dull and dusty" as today.

"Carved beams and painted rafters" is far more than literary hyperbole. Every wooden surface was adorned with brilliantly colored paintings, even flamboyant red-and-green combinations reminiscent of "Qianlong aesthetics."

On the inner walls of the East Hall of Foguang Temple, red-and-white paintings from the Tang Dynasty remain faintly visible, including an inscription by craftsman "Master Xu Qilang of Red-and-White (a Tang-Song term for skilled artisans)."

The restored East Hall of Foguang Temple,

is covered in Tang-style "vermilion-and-white paintings,"

The architectural layout was also different from what it is today.

Top/Historical Atlas: Long Live Our Han; Bottom/Visual China

The brilliant oil paint protected the wooden structure from wind and frost, yet it could not withstand the ravages of time and has long since peeled away, leaving a mottled surface. But the five-colored glazed tiles on the eaves were enough to immortalize this ultimate display of color.

"The White Jade Capital in heaven, twelve towers and five cities."

Through a series of intricate geometric calculations, craftsmen transformed the rigid corners of the eaves into an exquisitely graceful curve, expressing their boundless reverence.

The Song people used the "raising and folding" technique on rafters to turn straight roof lines into curves.

Such curves also facilitated the natural clearing of rain and snow.

Palaces and temples undoubtedly held the most important place in the hearts of the ancients.

Yet, amid the fires of war across dynasties, palaces were often the first to suffer, leaving behind only sighs over the ruins. Only those temples untouched by worldly strife could endure through millennia.

The Jin Temple in Taiyuan was originally built to honor Tang Shuyu, the founding ruler of the Jin State.

Later, it gradually transformed into a shrine for the "Holy Mother," Yi Jiang.

The Small Western Heaven in Xi County, with its 33-tiered suspended carvings, feels like stepping into a celestial gathering of countless deities.

The Hongtong Guangsheng Temple, dedicated to the Water God, preserves Yuan Dynasty murals as exquisite as those in Dunhuang.

The Small Western Heaven in Xi County: the pinnacle of Chinese suspended carving art.

Then there’s the Yongle Palace in Ruicheng, which in the Yuan Dynasty bore a grander name: the Great Chunyang Longevity Palace.

Its three main halls house the most well-preserved Yuan Dynasty polychrome paintings in China, covering a total area of 1,000 square meters—enough to fill 2.5 basketball courts. The "Assembly of the Immortals" mural depicts 394 deities in a scene described as "a gathering of heroes, a meeting of gods," using fade-resistant natural mineral pigments that remain vivid after 700 years.

A section of Yongle Palace’s "Assembly of the Immortals," the "annual meeting" of the gods.

They hail from the glorious Tang Dynasty and should never be left to fade away in remote mountains.

Chinese architecture is like a wise elder, weathered by time, emerging from the mists of history to recount the tales of its ever-changing past.

The Foguang Temple and Nanchan Temple from the Tang Dynasty are both hidden deep in the Wutai Mountains.

In 1937, when Mr. Liang Sicheng discovered the East Hall of Foguang Temple under the guidance of Dunhuang murals amid the flames of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, his first impression of this structure was "massive bracket sets and expansive overhanging eaves."

These largest surviving bracket sets in China endow Foguang Temple with profoundly far-reaching eaves, maximally shielding the walls from wind, frost, rain, and snow, while making the heavy roof appear as light as a phoenix soaring on wings—"like a bird spreading its wings, like a pheasant in flight"—echoing to us from the era of Du Mu, Li Shangyin, and Wen Tingyun.

These renowned structures are merely the tip of the iceberg of Shanxi's treasures.

Perhaps due to the rugged temperament shaped by the harsh northern climate, the architectural style of such colossal buildings was exceptionally popular during the Liao and Jin dynasties, with their massive and imposing bracket sets inheriting the legacy of the Tang dynasty.

Only by standing before them in person can one truly grasp the breathtaking grandeur of these structures, which might even evoke a sense of megalophobia.

Huayan Temple, located in the Liao dynasty's secondary capital of Datong, once served as the imperial temple for the Liao royal family.

"The Shu mountains were stripped bare to build the Epang Palace"—the endless exploitation over dynasties had long exhausted the giant timber resources of the Central Plains. By the 15th year of the Guangxu reign (1889), even imported timber from Southeast Asia was forced into use for the reconstruction of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven.

The scarcity of timber led to a continuous reduction in the scale of buildings over the centuries. After repeated reconstructions, the dimensions of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City had shrunk to less than half its original size, leaving only the disproportionately large platform to silently lament the无奈.

The ancients played a modest joke on later visitors at the Hanging Temple:

Those conspicuously thick pillars visible on the surface are merely decorative,

and bear no load-bearing function.

Relying solely on 27 beams embedded into the cliff face,

this "city in the sky" of 40 rooms was suspended on the hundred-meter precipice of Mount Heng.

Today, we can only catch a glimpse of the golden age of the Tang dynasty through these wooden structures weathered by millennia.

Shanxi's cold and arid climate has maximally preserved the wood from insect damage and decay. Countless rural temples scattered across the countryside seem encased in a time capsule, remaining unchanged for centuries.

The unique topography of "mountains and rivers within"—protected by outer mountains and inner rivers—has made it a naturally fortified stronghold since ancient times. These natural barriers shielded the region from millennia of warfare, creating isolated mountain villages akin to the Peach Blossom Spring, where people "knew not of the Han, let alone the Wei and Jin."

These sunken cave dwellings are a distinctive feature of Shanxi and Shaanxi on the Loess Plateau.

The unique local conditions made Shanxi, and only Shanxi, a "natural freezer" for preserving ancient architecture.

Of the over 44,000 temples that once flourished across the Tang dynasty, nearly all have vanished into the river of history. Only Nanchan Temple on Mount Wutai, nestled among the mountains, survived to become China's oldest extant wooden structure. Built in the 3rd year of the Jianzhong era (782) under Emperor Dezong of Tang, this was the year Bai Juyi had just turned ten.

It is a magnificent dream rooted deep in the heart of every Chinese person.

And these wooden structures that have survived to this day,

A fleeting glow that can be touched by hand.

The Princess Temple deep in the mountains, "Raised in seclusion, unknown to the world."

The ancients chose wood to build houses, infusing them with soul and life, yet also destined them not to be eternal like Western stone structures.

For this reason, every building that has slipped through the cracks of time becomes all the more precious.

For underground relics, look to Shaanxi; for above-ground relics, look to Shanxi.

28,640 ancient buildings are a legend unique to Shanxi.

Shuanglin Temple, where 1,566 painted sculptures silently witness the vicissitudes of the world.

Graphics | Jiuyang, Yu Yitiao

Cover image | Tuchong Creativity

The dazed architectural overtime worker Comrade Duan Ge

"Compilation of Chinese Archaeology · North China Volume" edited by Sun Jinji, Su Tianjun, Sun Hai

"Yingxian Wooden Pagoda" by Li Shiwen, Cao Anji

"Atlas of Chinese Cultural Relics · Shanxi Volume" edited by the National Cultural Heritage Administration

"A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture" by Liang Sicheng

"Research on the Evolution of Jinci Garden Architecture Through the Ages" by Cui Can

"The Spatiotemporal Misreading of the Relocation of Jinci's Mountain Gate" by Shen Yang

"Research on the Timber Framing of Feiyun Tower in Wanrong County, Shanxi" by Zhang Lizhong

"Glazed Rainbow—Artistic Research on Feihong Pagoda at Guangsheng Temple in Hongtong, Shanxi" by Li Feng

"Chongfu Temple—A Chanting Journey from the Jin Dynasty" by Zhao Yifei

"A Brief Analysis of the Transformation of Shanxi Folk Art in Contemporary Chinese Sculpture Language: A Case Study of Shanxi Temple Colored Sculptures" by Yan Jiahui

"Dynamic Characteristics and Seismic Response Analysis of Yingxian Wooden Ancient Pagoda" by Che Ailan; "Investigation and Mechanical Performance Analysis of Bracket Sets in Yingxian Wooden Pagoda" by Wang Zhihua

"Mo Zongjiang: How Liang Sicheng Discovered the Tang Dynasty Foguang Temple" by Mo Zongjiang

"Notes on the Architecture of Foguang Temple on Mount Wutai" by Liang Sicheng

"Preliminary Study on the Restoration of Linde Hall" by Liu Zhiping, Fu Xinian

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