Whirlpool Hall

Whirlpool Hall

The hall of spirals is an ancient building built in the Ming Dynasty. Also known as Wenchang palace. Located on a huge stone at the foot of Shiniu mountain, 2.5km south of Lizhuang Town, Yibin City, Sichuan Province, it was built in the 24th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1596) and cultivated by Yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty.

Triple eaves octagonal save spire, 25 meters high, roof shop tube tiles and small green tiles. The hall is octagonal in plane, with a width of 8 meters and a depth of 8 meters. The inner structure of the temple is different from that of ordinary temples. Four wellhead columns are used to run through the second floor. Lifting beams, crossing beams and corner beams are used to connect the wellhead columns to form the backbone of the beam frame. On the first floor, the lifting beam carries on the corrugated wood floor in the hall. The East and West beams are attached with beams and braces under them. Eight walking beams are set up on top of which eight middle-level eaves columns are set up. The eaves braces are supported on top and eaves are attached on the bottom. The eaves braces are middle eaves and bucket arches. The second floor carries 8 eaves columns on the top floor. The flat beams of eaves columns are arched on the top. The outer eaves are arched on the outside of the sitting bucket, and the mesh shaped caisson is formed on the inside. The arches of the hall are roughly the same, layer by layer, bearing beams inside and overhanging eaves outside. The top of the caisson has a bucket arch on eight sides. On the left side, Ruyi Dougong is used, and on the right side, the oblique wing and the back tail of Dougong overlap upward to form a mesh, and rotate to the right, which is like a spiral, so the temple has this name. There are five inscriptions on the wall of the inner sill of the hall in the Qing Dynasty, most of which are about the cultivation of the spiral hall in the past dynasties.

On the first floor of the hall, there is an inscription "the hall was completed in August of bingshen in the 24th year of Wanli in Ming Dynasty". In the 1940s, Liang Sicheng and Mo Zongjiang, famous ancient architects, once inspected the hall. In the first issue of the seventh volume of China construction society, they wrote that the building was "superior in beam and column structure, rather proud of the work of the time". In 1956, Sichuan Provincial People's government announced it as a cultural relic protection unit. On May 25, 2006, as an ancient building of Ming Dynasty, the spiral hall was approved by the State Council to be listed in the Sixth Batch of national key cultural relics protection units.

Address: 2.5km south of Lizhuang Town, Yibin City, Sichuan Province

Longitude: 104.8053

Latitude: 28.800533