The long and short of it: save our ancient pagoda!

A fresh attempt to stop the world's tallest wooden pagoda from falling down should soon be under way.

Cultural relics officials in Yingxian County of North China's Shanxi Province said they will choose from among several plans to decide how to best repair the ancient religious building. Work should begin next month.

The structure, known as Sakyamuni Pagoda, was built out of timber in 1056 during the Liao Dynasty (916-1125).

Located in Fogong (Buddha's Palace) Temple in the northwestern corner of the county town of Yingxian, the pagoda is 65.86 metres high. It is the only large wooden pagoda still in existence in China and is the tallest ancient wooden building in the world.

For nearly a thousand years, the wooden pagoda has withstood numerous strong earthquakes and gunfire during wartime.

It has more than 100 areas of damage which need to be repaired urgently, said Gao Ke, deputy director with the Shanxi Cultural Relics Bureau.

Since the wooden structure is very fragile and hard to repair, experts have come up with a number of repair schemes which aim to treat the building very cautiously, Gao was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

The overall repair project of the Buddhist tower began in 1997. It has been listed one of the six key cultural relics repair projects in the country during the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05) period.

Built on a stone platform four metres high, the pagoda has five storeys.

According to historical records, during a severe earthquake during the reign of Emperor Shun of the Yuan Dynasty, the pagoda stood firm.

Although the Yingxian County area was affected by big earthquakes in Xingtai and Tangshan of Hebei Province and in Helinger of Inner Mongolia in the past two decades, the wooden pagoda remained standing. The pagoda's anti-seismic strength demonstrates the sturdiness of wooden structures in ancient China.

Source: China Daily