A Divine-Level Museum in a Tier-5 City in Northeast China (Chaoyang)

A thematic museum in a small northeastern city with a low profile dares to charge fifty yuan for admission, and the reviews are so high that there must be something special about it After learning more, it turns out that the Beita Museum, as the name suggests, is a museum built around the Chaoyang North Pagoda. There are only a few hundred cultural relics, but almost all of them are fine pieces. There are four national treasure-level relics, including the real body sarira of the Burning Lamp Buddha, which is definitely worth the price of admission Before entering the museum, don't miss the North Pagoda next to it. This 'Number One Pagoda in the Northeast' was built over five dynasties, starting from the palace construction of the Former Yan during the Sixteen Kingdoms period to the last major renovation in the Liao Dynasty, spanning over seven hundred years. It has been constructed through the times of the Three Yans, Northern Wei, Sui, Tang, and Liao dynasties, making it the only known pagoda with 'five generations in one'. The museum has sectional diagrams of the North Pagoda from different eras, which are quite intuitive. The museum is divided into two floors. The first floor uses the North Pagoda as a lead to introduce the origin, evolution, typical structure, and architectural forms of the pagoda. It basically makes the past and present of the pagoda clear. I didn't know until now that the pagoda was originally a building for preserving or burying the 'relics' of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. The Sanskrit word for pagoda means tomb. As Buddhism was introduced into China, the pagoda combined with China's existing architectural forms and traditional culture to develop into various types of Chinese pagodas. The hardcore exhibits are concentrated on the basement floor. The four national treasure-level relics are the Persian glass bottle, the gold and silver sutra pagoda, the gilded silver pagoda, and the seven treasures relic pagoda. The real body sarira of the Buddha unearthed from the Southern Pagoda's underground palace is also enshrined here The most stunning are the Persian glass bottle and the seven treasures relic pagoda. The Persian glass bottle is a 'bottle within a bottle' made of transparent glass, and its most amazing feature is that there is a smaller bottle inside the larger one, which is very well preserved; the seven treasures relic pagoda is a square single-eave style, with gold and silver ornaments strung with silver wire on top, and treasures such as coral, pearls, agate, jade, and crystal, making it appear crystal clear and extraordinarily luxurious. When it was discovered in 1988, the wooden boards had been burned by a fire caused by a lightning strike, and the silver wire had also been broken, so the entire treasure cover was disassembled, and tens of thousands of pearls were scattered. Since it was impossible to know the original shape of the seven treasures pagoda, the restorers could only rely on imagination and limited Buddhist scriptures to reassemble it, which was a considerable amount of work. This is also the only unearthed relic of the seven treasures pagoda in the world That's all for the treasures. If you want to know more details, you should come and see for yourself. Finally, I want to mention the Liao Dynasty inscribed brick in Figure 17 that reads 'Lucky Stars Shine High'. The writing is bold and powerful, the structure is simple and elegant, and the charm is extraordinary, reminiscent of the style of Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan