The Yue Tower. The exact construction time is uncertain. According to the ‘Records of Andong County in Yongzheng Period’, in ancient times, the Yue Tower was one of the three towers in the large-scale Faji Temple. The other two towers have been damaged and are unknown. The special chapter on ‘Yue Tower in Lianshui, Jiangsu’ in the book ‘Essentials of Ancient Chinese Pagodas’ records as follows: ‘The tower has an octagonal plane. It may have had seven floors in the past. Now only six floors remain, with a total height of 24 meters. It is also a pavilion-style tower. This tower has no base, only a simple platform base. The first floor of the tower body is extremely tall. There are angled door openings (gu-shaped) on the east, west, south, and north sides. The tower body is smooth without decoration. At the cornice, there is a single-tier dougong. Except for the corners, there are two on each side. This is commonly seen on Song Dynasty towers. The eaves are very short. Stone strips are used as corner beams at the corners. Due to the dilapidated tower eaves, there is no intention of a flat seat. On the second and third floors of the tower body, there are four door and window openings on four sides, and the remaining four sides are decorative windows. The structure is roughly similar to that of the first floor. The fourth floor has vertical lattice windows. The fifth and sixth floors have been damaged. The interior of the tower is of the ‘folding-up style within the wall’. Thus, judging from the extremely standard door and window openings and dougong patterns, the Yue Tower is a tower of the Song Dynasty. Open all year round and all day long.
Yue Tower
The Yue Tower. The exact construction time is uncertain. According to the ‘Records of Andong C[...]
