Then & Now | Gone, or swamped by development: Hong Kong's pagodas

Pagodas have been a landscape feature in China for more than 1,000 years. While many rural pagodas have decayed over time into picturesque, gently leaning semi-ruins, with greenery sprouting from upper storeys, those within cities have generally been permanently maintained and embellished with colourful urban legends.

Guangzhou has two towering pagodas. These are likened to the two masts of a sailing junk, with the five-storey Zhenhai Tower, atop a fragment of the old city walls, regarded as the vessel’s symbolic poop deck. The structures date back to the city’s eminence as the eastern terminus of the Maritime Silk Route from Europe, via Asia Minor and the Indian Ocean, and are seen as enduring, 1,000-year-old links to the wider world.

The word “pagoda” is of Persian or Hindi origin; it sounds similar in both languages and provides a historical link between India and China. Known in Chinese, however, as “tap”, the typical pagoda shape derives from the Ashoka-period urn (now housed in the Indian Museum, in Calcutta) that, according to legend, contains a portion of the cremated remains of Gautama Buddha himself. Modern urns for cremated human remains are euphemistically known as “golden pagodas”.

The closest ancient pagoda to Hong Kong is in Huizhou, on the East River, some 100km northeast of Shenzhen. Known as the Sizhou pagoda, this Tang dynasty relic commemorates an early Buddhist sage named Seng Jla. Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo described it as the Great Sage Pagoda. Like most others, Huizhou’s pagoda has been badly damaged and fully rebuilt several times, most recently in 1618, and is now surrounded by the extensive, beautifully kept West Lake gardens.