Big Wild Goose Pagoda at night
1 min readThe Big Wild Goose Pagoda is regarded by many as a symbol of the city. Built in AD 652,the pagoda has a 16. 4-foot-high (5 m square base and reaches 212 feet (64.5 m) in height. It was built to house and protect Buddhist scriptures collected by a Chinese monk, Xuan Zang, who spent an epic 17 years traveling to India and back gathering them and an equal amount of time translating them. His journey has been immortalized in the novel Journey to the West, one of China’s most important literary works. Located in Muslim district along Huajue Lane (huajue xiang ) the Great Mosque(da qingzhen si) is short walk from the Drum Tower(gu lou) and the Bell Tower(zhong lou) at the center of town. The mosque, which is still an active place of worship, was established by the Tang dynasty in AD 742 for Muslim traders from Central Asia who settled in Xi’an.
