Famen Temple
Rebuilt brick pagoda over a Tang-dynasty crypt that hid a finger bone relic for over a thousand years.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Famen Temple near Xi'an opens with a secret guarded for over a thousand years using decoys, then rewinds to the storm that broke it open: at two in the morning on August 4th 1981, half the brick pagoda sheared away and crashed into the courtyard below, a tower already cracked by an earthquake five years earlier. It follows the four-year wait before officials decided to excavate the ruin, and the moment in 1987 when workers broke through into a sealed Tang-dynasty passage underneath. Note the rebuilt pagoda now standing where the original one fell.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Lintong Museum
Nested gold and silver reliquary coffins once sealed in a Tang-dynasty temple crypt, alongside bronzes and stone steles.
Caotang Temple
Ancient monastery garden holding a marble stupa said to enshrine the unburned tongue of a legendary sutra translator.
兴教寺
Solid brick tomb tower disguised as timber pagoda architecture, holding a Tang-era monk's remains for over thirteen centuries.
Giant Wild Goose Pagoda
Brick pagoda raised by a fugitive monk to house the six hundred and fifty seven scriptures he smuggled home from India.
Small Wild Goose Pagoda
Tang-era brick pagoda that has cracked open in earthquakes and sealed itself shut three times over centuries.
Xi'an Big Wild Goose Pagoda Scenic Area
Seven-story brick pagoda raised as a secure repository and translation workshop for scriptures carried from India.