Qingpu Wanshou Pagoda

Qingpu Wanshou Pagoda

Qingpu Wanshou Pagoda is a cultural relic protection unit of Shanghai Municipality.

Wanshou Pagoda (Wanshou Ta), commonly known as Nanmen Pagoda, is located at the southern gate of Qingpu Town, Qingpu County. Built in the eighth year of the Qianlong reign during the Qing Dynasty (1743), the pagoda is square-shaped, has seven levels with four sides each, and features a brick-and-timber structure. Wang Dexin’s “Record of the Pagoda Courtyard” states: “The local gentry and elders, along with the common townspeople, contributed money to emulate the Buddhist tradition, and resolutely erected this towering pagoda outside the southern gate… Its tiers were adorned in bright reds and yellows, soaring into the clouds. Upon completion, it was bestowed with the auspicious name 'Wanshou'... The people of the county looked up to it in reverence, feeling gratitude for the peace and prosperity of the past hundred years, and echoed with voices of celebration and prayers for longevity. This was not merely to glorify civilization like the story of the Wild Goose Pagoda, which served as a place to inscribe the names of talented scholars, but to repay the grace of the nation. Hence, this pagoda has no connection with Buddhism.” After the pagoda’s completion, halls, chambers, and corridors were built nearby, covering an area of over 30 acres, collectively called the Wanshou Pagoda Courtyard. The courtyard had three grand halls. In the thirty-ninth year of Qianlong’s reign (1774), Xu Shu (a native of Baihe Jiangpu and a successful imperial examination candidate) personally funded the restoration of the pagoda, making it “gleam brilliantly under the sky.” In the forty-third year (1778), the pagoda was struck by lightning and severely damaged. Between the forty-sixth and forty-seventh years (1781–1782), the Qing scholar Wang Chang compiled the “Qingpu County Annals” at the pagoda courtyard. In the fifth year of the Jiaqing reign (1800), the Qingxi Academy was built to the right of the pagoda courtyard, where Wang Chang was invited to serve as lecturer. In the ninth year of the Guangxu reign (1883), a coppersmith climbed the pagoda to steal tin. A fire broke out while he was melting the tin, and most of the wooden structures were burned down. Today, both the pagoda’s spire and its eaves are missing.

In 1959, it was listed among the first batch of county-level cultural relic protection units. In 1982, a stone revetment was built along the riverbank at the base of the pagoda, and a surrounding wall with dragon-back lattice windows was constructed. In 1993, further repairs and reinforcement were carried out on the pagoda itself. In 2009, the District Cultural Relics Management Committee restored the Wanshou Pagoda and installed landscape lighting.

Wanshou Pagoda was designated as a district-level cultural relic protection unit in 2001, and as a municipal-level cultural relic protection unit on April 2014.