中餐外卖界的“明星”

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中餐外卖界的“明星”

In many American dramas such as The Big Bang Theory or Friends, you may notice such an interesting scene: whenever there is the Chinese takeaway food, you can almost always see a red Chinese pagoda or tower on the outside of the boxes or the containers.

You may not know it, but this pagoda is in fact the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, part of the Great Bao'en Temple that once stood on the south bank of Qinhuai River.

中古世界七大奇迹



The Porcelain Tower was first built in 1428 by Zhu Di the Yongle Emperor of Ming Dynasty, to commemorate his mother, who was an imperial concubine.

Called “the great antique of China, and the great kiln ware of Yongle”, the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing was listed as one of the “Seven Wonders of the Medieval World”, together with the Colosseum in Rome, the Hagia Sophia in Turkey, the Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa in Egypt and the Great Wall of China.



Why and how has an ancient Chinese pagoda become known to the world?

It is all thanks to a Dutch traveler.

传播先驱：荷兰



During the early Qing period, the Dutch East India Company sent an embassy to China, among the delegation that visited the Great Bao’en Temple was the painter Johan Nieuhof.

Upon returning to the Netherlands, Johan Neiuhof wrote and published a travel journal, in which he enthusiastically praised the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing: "In my opinion, there is no Chinese architecture comparable to it." In this book, he also drew exquisite illustrations of the tower.

建筑模仿：法国



King Louis XIV of France made a "fake" Porcelain Tower of Nanjing as well: the Trianon de Porcelaine built in 1670 in Versailles.

中西元素结合：英国




Indeed, the famous Great Pagoda in London’s Kew Gardens is an imitation of the Chinese Porcelain Tower, whose roofs were adorned with iridescent wooden dragons (but in appearance, the dragons in the West are totally different from the Chinese dragons).

Kew Gardens was designed by the British architect Sir William Chambers. In his youth, William Chambers had visited Guangdong twice with the merchant ships of the East India Company, and had developed a strong interest in Chinese architecture and gardens. He also published a monograph on everything Chinese in 1757, titled Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils.

童话中的塔：丹麦



In 1839, Danish fairy tale master Andersen even wrote this large porcelain tower into his fairy tales.

In the "Garden of Paradise ", a teenager named Eastwind wore a set of Chinese clothes who just flew back from China and told his wind mother: "I have just come from China, where I danced round the porcelain tower till all the bells jingled."

后续...




Nearly 400 years after it was first built, the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing was destroyed in 1856 during the Taiping Rebellion.

In 2015, the Great Bao’en Temple Ruins Park was officially opened to the public.

END

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