Exploring Ancient Relics in Qilu: The Four Gates Pagoda

For thousands of years, the ancestors living in the Qilu region created a brilliant Qilu culture and left behind a rich legacy of ancient architecture. Nestled among the verdant mountains about 30 kilometers south of Jinan city, a thousand-year-old stone pagoda stands quietly—this is the Four Gates Pagoda, the oldest extant single-story pavilion-style stone pagoda in China. It is both a cultural relic and an internet sensation. Dubbed the "Cat Temple" by netizens due to the large number of stray cats inhabiting the area, it has become a popular check-in spot... Built in the 7th year of the Sui Dynasty's Daye era (611 AD), the Four Gates Pagoda has weathered over 1,400 years of history while retaining its original architectural form. The entire pagoda is constructed from bluestone, standing 15 meters tall, with four stone Buddha statues enshrined inside. Each of its four sides features a semicircular arched gate, hence the name "Four Gates." With its clean lines and unadorned design, this single-story square stone pagoda embodies the majestic style of Sui and Tang Dynasty architecture. The Four Gates Pagoda is the only surviving Sui Dynasty stone pagoda in China and holds a significant place in the country's architectural history. In the 1930s, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, the pioneering couple in Chinese architectural studies, included the pagoda as a key stop in their "rescue-style survey" of ancient Chinese structures. At the time, the pagoda was hidden in the wilderness, and the couple trekked through mountains to document its form and details through hand-drawn sketches, photographs, and written records, systematically preserving it for the first time in their seminal work, *A History of Chinese Architecture*. Liang Sicheng praised it as "a model of early stone pagodas, with its archaic form and exquisite proportions." In 1961, the Four Gates Pagoda was designated as one of the first batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units. Shenyang · Liaoning