Entity
Dali Yanghe Pagoda
Dali, Yunnan, China
In 1814, during the nineteenth year of the Jiaqing reign, builders in Dali raised a stone tower in the damp, fertile fields between the Cangshan mountains and Erhai Lake.This structure, known as the Yanghe or Julong Pagoda, stands in the agricultural fields of Zhongyanghe Village, positioned between the G214 National Highway and the Dali Line. It rose as a fengshui monument, built by villagers to summon rain, control water, and invite cultural prosperity to their valley.
The pagoda stands nineteen meters tall, an eleven-tier square hollow stone tower resting on a base five point seven meters wide and one point nine meters high. Its rough lower walls are one meter thick, built to withstand the valley winds. For the first eight tiers, the tower rises straight toward the sky with uniform width, only tapering inward at the ninth level. Inside, the tower is hollow. Carpenters installed diagonal wooden cross-frames at each level, providing lateral support and allowing caretakers to climb into the musty darkness. On the outside, five layers of corbeled brick and stone form eaves that project outward by eight centimeters. Arched windows pierce the four sides of each tier, alternating between fully open and half-open configurations to let the wind whistle through the stone.
Human hands left their marks on the ground tier, where four smooth marble tablets are embedded into the outer walls. On the west face, a horizontal plaque reads "Julong Pagoda." The east face bears the original 1814 inscription. The north and south faces carry the records and donor names from a major reconstruction in 1920, preserving the identities of local families who pooled their resources to save the tower. During this 1920 repair, or shortly after, the original metal finial at the top was destroyed, leaving behind white lime repair marks that remain visible today.
Now protected as a prefectural-level cultural relic, the pagoda remains in its original location. It stands as a quiet monument to Qing Dynasty engineering, surrounded by green crops, holding the memories of a community that carved their hopes into stone.