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| Huiguang Tower--the Leaning Tower of the East |
Built in the Southern and Northern Dynasties (468 AD), Huiguang Tower, Located on Huiguang road, Lianzhou city is one of the oldest brick towers in China. For more than 1500 years, the tower has stood balancing at an angle, with the top of the tower a full 1.0472 meters west of its base. A cultural heritage point under the protection of Guangdong province, the tower, known as the Leaning Tower of the East, is rich in historical, scientific and artistic significance.
When standing aside the tower, one is instantly aware that its center of gravity is not as one would expect. The tower was built on the top of a small stone hill and after millennia of wind and rain and movements in the soil, its foundations have moved slightly, giving it its westward lean
In 1985, the State Cultural Heritage Administration created a special fund to renovate and consolidate the foundations of this landmark of Lianzhou, a time-honored city.
The tower has a wooden structure. In the Tang and Song dynasties, it was built in the pavilion style. Shaped hexagonally, its external wall is earth red, while its interior adopts a corbel arch structure. Its body is hollow with a stairway connecting the nine stories and seventeen stages of this 49.86 meters high tower. Every story has brick laid corner columns; the size is reduced progressively story by story giving the tower an appearance of elegance.
Near the tower lies an iron cast pinnacle originally designed to be placed on top of the ancient tower. When the tower was built, the pinnacle turned out to be too heavy to be lifted to the top, and so was left aside the tower. Although 1,500 years has passed, this huge tower cap is still smooth, without a speck of rust. According to older local people, during the period of "Great Steel Making” some locals, seeing this large iron object tried to take it away for the project. They tried everything; axing, sawing and even burning, but amazingly, the object remained untarnished. Today, nobody really knows what metal the pinnacle was made from.
The mysterious legends of the ancient tower and its pinnacle have long aroused the interest of a number of TV stations and newspapers in Hong Kong. A number of cameramen and reporters have visited the tower, spreading the history and culture of the millennial “Leaning Tower of the East” all over the world.
