Prologue (1/1)

Prologue

The Temple of Repaid Gratitude1 is located upon the banks of the Qinhuai River, in the ancient capital Nanjing, is China’s second te, and is also the first teion of China Its history can be traced back to the third century AD, when the Eastern Wu3 country within the Dynasty of the Three Kingdoms built the first te 247 AD, the e in his country, and built the Ashoka Toithin the te Nan Temple

The ancient tees, as well as rises and falls within the thousand years to cole5 of the Ming Dynasty, the Emperor (personal name Zhu Di) issued an irand scale – bestowing it the name of Temple of Repaid Gratitude – as well as si a nine level Lazurite Tower (also called the Porcelain Tower)

The Temple of Repaid Gratitude was hailed as one of the “Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages” along with the Great Wall of China, the Roe, Egypt’s Alexandria’s Catacoia Sofia The Porcelain Toas even revered as the “First Tower Beneath the Heavens”

In 1656, Dutchman Johan Nieuhof6 traveled with the diplo Empire, and returned honey in den Grossen Tartarischen Cham und nunmehr auch Sinischen Keyser, also known as “The Travels of Nieuhof” Illustrations of the Temple of Repaid Gratitude are found within, and Nieuhof wrote: “The pagan monks opened the tereat hall with roughly ten thousand statues of Buddha There was a porcelain tower constructed in the middle of the temple, built when the Tartars arrived around 700 hundred years ago After the chaos of lorious past perfectly depicts the ancient proverb of iaze upon the entire city, and even its outskirts, when standing at the peak of the tower – all the way to the opposite banks of the Yangtze River I would like to capture it with poetry and list this porcelain toithin the ranks of the Seven Wonders of the World I, a Christian, was thusly subdued by the tean”

Along with the publication and widespread distribution of this book, the Temple of Repaid Gratitude became the piece of Chinese architecture that Europeans were most familiar with The Porcelain Tower even becah lazurite was a type of glazed ceramic and not porcelain

There were nine levels to the Porcelain Tower, equivalent to twenty six stories There were eight sides to the tower, and all were covered with lazurite tiles of five different colors, which were in turn embedded with old foil It was sparkling, translucent, and flashed brightly Wind chimes trailed below the peak of the tower, and beneath the cornices of every level Whenever breezes frotze River brushed past, the chiirl was hu lowly

When Ele rebuilt the Temple of Repaid Gratitude, official history records that it was in gratitude of Empress Ma The “Monument of the Imperial Construction of the Temple of Repaid Gratitude” has the posthumous title of Empress Ma (皇妣孝慈昭憲至仁文德承天順聖高皇后) on it, but many historians have expressed their skepticisle built the Temple of Repaid Gratitude inDebate has abounded with various considerations as to whether his mother was Empress Ma, or a non-Han Chinese concubine of his father’s

After six hundred years had passed, the truth of history had long since perished along with the multiple flourishes and declines of the ancient capital Nanjing No h up the evidence, theorize, or speculate – no one will ever know the truth – apart from Zhu Di himself

1854 AD, the Temple of Repaid Gratitude was destroyed in the fla war, and the Porcelain Tower could never be seen again

December 17, 2015 AD, the Memorial Park of the Teinal site of the Tee and nificent, and the newly styled Tower towersthe quaint side streets of the ancient capital, or driving speedily along the brand new streets of the new city Nanjing, the Tower often appears in front of one’s eyes It’s unconsciously beco Noit up close, the beauty of the Tower always causes one to s arise in that space between astonishment: What circuo? What story lay between Ele and the Porcelain Tower?

Let us turn the pages and explore together

1 enwikipediaorg/wiki/Porcelain_Tower_of_Nanjing↩

2 enwikipediaorg/wiki/White_Horse_Temple↩

3 enwikipediaorg/wiki/Eastern_Wu↩

4 enwikipediaorg/wiki/Sun_Quan↩

5 enwikipediaorg/wiki/Yongle_Emperor↩

6 enwikipediaorg/wiki/Johan_Nieuhof↩

7 enwikipediaorg/wiki/Shunzhi_Emperor↩