Most pagodas from the Song Dynasty favor the octagon, softening their silhouette against the sky. The White Pagoda of Pengxi, built in 1204, insists on the square. This sharp, four-sided geometry gives the structure a rare, martial rigidity as it rises thirty-six meters above Mount Jiufeng. Its builders, led by the local patron Li Bailin, engaged in a sophisticated architectural deception: they constructed a tower of brick and stone that pretends to be wood. Every exterior level features masonry carved to resemble the intricate carpentry of the era. The pillars, the lintels, and even the complex dougong brackets—which typically transfer the weight of heavy timber roofs—are here rendered in unyielding clay and stone. This technique preserved the aesthetic of the wooden pavilion while granting it the endurance of a fortress.

The interior experience contradicts the tower's solid appearance. Unlike solid-core pagodas that force climbers to the edges, this structure contains a hollow heart. A stone staircase winds through the central shaft, creating a vertical tunnel where the visitor is intimate with the architecture. Above each landing, the builders constructed elaborate brick caisson ceilings—domed recesses painted with religious iconography—turning every floor into a private sanctuary rather than a mere landing. The ground floor columns bear carvings of coiled dragons, details that would usually rot away on timber but here remain sharp after eight centuries.

Time has clarified the builder's intent. The original wooden halls of the surrounding Jiufeng Temple burned down or rotted away centuries ago, victims of the impermanence inherent in timber construction. The White Pagoda remains. It survived the wars of the Yuan transition and the cultural shifts of the modern era. When the architectural historian Liang Sicheng visited in the 1930s, he noted how the tower seemed to "soar into the void," a vertical constant in a landscape that has otherwise been completely rewritten. Today, standing near the bustle of a modern hospital and the shifting town of Chicheng, the tower serves as a fossil of Song Dynasty aesthetics, holding the shape of a wooden world that no longer exists.