In the United States, white folded takeaway boxes stamped with a red pagoda motif have long been synonymous with Chinese food. They frequently have appeared in movies and TV shows, such as Friends and The Big Bang Theory.
Online speculation about whether the famous pagoda was a real place or not has put the Glazed Pagoda of the Great Bao'en Temple in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, in the social media spotlight.
The image found on some of those cartons is that of the nine-story, 78-meter-tall edifice with its glazed facade, which has long been considered a marvel in China and abroad.
"The tower was once a visual symbol through which the Western world understood China," said Wang Wenxi, director of the Great Bao'en Temple Ruins Museum.
Once considered one of the seven wonders of the medieval world, the ancient building inspired the design of the Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens in London and was featured in a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.
Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), started the ambitious project in 1412 to show gratitude to his parents. Construction was completed in 1428, and the tower quickly became a popular tourist attraction. It remained so, right up until its destruction in 1856 during the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64).
"Every piece of the facade (on the tower) was intricately designed, with extremely stringent firing requirements resulting in an even, flawless glaze," said Zhang Yongyi, a Jiangnan culture scholar.
Jiangnan refers to the region to the south of China's Yangtze River.
At night, the whole pagoda was said to glow like a resplendent lantern, visible far across the city. The pagoda remained the tallest structure in Nanjing throughout the Ming Dynasty and most of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and inspired endless poetry.
When Europeans first laid eyes on it, they did not see glaze, but something closer to myth. In 1638, Alvaro Semedo, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary in China, likened it to ancient Roman architecture, mistaking its tiles for porcelain. The travelogue of Johan Nieuhof, a Dutch traveler who visited China, cemented its fame, and the "Porcelain Tower" became a symbol of the Orient.
Although it was destroyed in a conflict, the ruins still offer a glimpse of its former splendor.
In 2008, archaeologists excavating beneath the pagoda's foundation discovered an underground palace. Inside were the Seven Treasures Pagoda of King Ashoka and, even more extraordinary, the skull relic of Shakyamuni — the holiest relic in Buddhism. In 2015, a modern tower about 93 meters tall was completed, incorporating the original ruins and paying deference to the tower's historical importance.
"Restoring the glazed pagoda of the Ming Dynasty would require the original materials, craftsmanship and techniques, all of which are unavailable today," said Wang, the museum director. She added that the steel frame and ultra-white glass of the modern structure carry the load precisely above the fragile underground palace, protecting it completely from subsidence.
"The public regret is not that the tower wasn't rebuilt in its original form, but that this world wonder was destroyed by war. We are restoring not just the appearance of the pagoda, but also its significant historical meaning."
Today, the new tower still attracts visitors, albeit of a different kind.
Shauchenka Volha, a student from Belarus at Nanjing University of Science and Technology, recently shared her ascent of the tower on Xiaohongshu.
"I finally climbed the Great Bao'en Temple today," she wrote. "The lift took me to the eighth floor, and the moment I stepped out, the whole of Nanjing was spread out before me."
Guo Jun and Wang Qian contributed to this story.
