Zhongyang Tower

Zhongyang Tower

Zhongyang Tower is a national key cultural relics protection unit.

Zhongyang Tower, located on the central street of the ancient county town in Xiaoyi City, Shanxi Province, is a national key cultural relics protection unit. According to surviving inscriptions, the tower was first built during the Han and Wei dynasties when the seat of Zhongyang County government was located here, hence its name. It collapsed due to an earthquake in the seventh year of the Yuandade era, but the exact date of its reconstruction remains unknown. In the seventh year of the Qing Tongzhi era, it was struck by lightning and caught fire, and was later rebuilt in the first year of the Xuantong era. After the liberation, the county government allocated funds and carried out two major comprehensive renovations in 1957 and 1983. The existing Zhongyang Tower is well preserved.

Zhongyang Tower faces all four streets, taking the form of a street-crossing tower. The structure is square in plan, with four stories and four eaves, entirely made of timber, featuring a cross-hipped roof covered with multicolored glazed tiles. The tower is 19.48 meters high and stands on four stone bases, each 3 meters square and 1.5 meters high. The ground floor is 5 meters high and open on all sides. Stone bases are equipped with staircases and display stone inscriptions. The caisson ceiling features a diagram of King Wen’s Eight Trigrams. The second floor is 3.64 meters high, with a central shrine that once housed statues of the Four Directional Buddhas (destroyed during the Cultural Revolution). The third floor is 4 meters high, with a central lotus pedestal that once held a 5-foot-tall clay statue of Guanyin (also destroyed during the Cultural Revolution). The fourth floor is 3 meters high and hollow, offering visitors a panoramic view of the city. The top section is 4 meters high with 2-meter-high ornamental ridge ends, all covered with glazed roof ornaments. A total of 14 plaques of various sizes hang from the north and south sides of the tower. The central plaque under the southern eave reads “Harmony in Position and Nurture,” with side plaques reading “Embracing the Fen River” and “Fronting Mount Huo.” The second southern eave bears a central plaque reading “Practicing Filial Piety and Righteousness,” with side plaques reading “Facing the Southern Dipper” and “Connecting to Mount Heng.” The northern eave's central plaque reads “Radiance Across the Four Quarters,” with side plaques reading “Controlling Yunzhong and Shuozhou” and “Central to the Axis.” The second northern eave has a central plaque reading “Surveying the Four Corners,” with side plaques reading “Leaning on Mount Da Heng” and “Encircling the North Star.” Each of the four eaves also displays a plaque with the three characters “Zhongyang Tower.” Additionally, a carved wooden couplet hangs from the southern eave pillar on the first floor, with the upper line reading “Filial piety is the foundation of human character” and the lower line “Righteousness is the creed of rulers.”

The tower employs permanent column construction, with corridors on the first to third floors. The second eave is a flat balcony, and the pillars of the second and third-floor corridors stand on the bracket arms of the lower-layer embracing beams. From the bottom up, each floor tapers inward, creating an aesthetically pleasing and proportionally harmonious form. Each embracing beam is offset from the inner columns and set atop the horizontal bracket sets of the inner columns, ensuring the structural integrity and sturdiness of the central columns—an unusual and rare design in pavilion-style architecture. Inner and outer lattice beams on each floor intersect with the central columns to form ring beams, and the base of each corner corridor pillar is equipped with a foot beam for added stability. Each eave is fitted with bracket sets. Since the embracing beams do not interlock with the central columns, the bracket sets on the first to third floors are not seated on the tops of the regular columns. The inner ceiling of the first floor features a caisson, built up layer by layer with seven-tiered, three-curved bracket sets, with the Eight Trigrams painted at the center. The first-floor bracket sets are three-curved single-angled, both inside and out, with a width of 70 mm and height of 155 mm, and five sets of horizontal bracket arms on each face. The second floor has three-curved single-curved bracket sets, with the same dimensions and four sets per face. The third floor features five-curved double-curved bracket sets, again with the same dimensions and three sets per face. The top floor uses seven-curved triple-angled bracket sets, with inner seven-curved triple-curved sets, an 80 mm width and 180 mm height, and two sets per face. The rooftop structure is a cross-hipped design, supported by diagonal braces from each corner to the midpoint of the ridge beam, with pendant lotus columns at the center. The roof is adorned with yellow and green glazed ridge beasts, beautifully crafted.

Inside the tower are six stone tablets, one of which is the “Record of Constructing Zhongyang Tower and Yong’an Market” erected in the fifth year of the Republic of China. The inscription states: “Since the Han and Tang dynasties when Xihe Commandery was established, Xiaoyi has been a key stronghold, bustling with horse carriages and thronged by merchants. Most travelers passing through the commandery city would go through this area. Although Xiaoyi served as a guardian of the commandery, with Mount Ping and Mount Huo in front and Mount Yun and Mount Shuo behind, it had long been a vital north-south thoroughfare—this is the origin of the name Zhongyang Tower.” This reflects that Zhongyang Tower was situated along a route frequented by scholars and merchants, highlighting the area’s former prosperity. The other five tablets are Republican-era merit steles.

Zhongyang Tower is the largest and best-preserved ancient tower-style building in the Jinzhong and Lüliang regions. It is a landmark structure in Xiaoyi’s historic district and major commercial trading areas. It not only showcases the architectural style of market towers in the region but also reflects the rise and fall of commerce throughout the area’s historical development, making it of great historical and scientific value. The tower’s caisson ceiling is richly decorated and structurally sound, while its architectural paintings are vividly colored, depicting figures and stories from classics such as “The Investiture of the Gods,” “Water Margin,” and “The Legend of Yue Fei.” These artworks are abundant in content and hold significant artistic value.

Further Reading:

· Sixth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units