White Pagoda Park

On 25 November 2010, the People's Congress of Hangzhou announced a plan to build a White Pagoda Park centred around the White Pagoda.^[5] On 13 June 2012, a modernisation and vivation plan of the White Pagoda was proposed by the Hangzhou Municipal People's Government to the Standing Committee of People's Congress of Hangzhou, which was approved on 14 June.^[6]

Covering an area of 78.4 hectares, the planned area further included the historic relics of the Jianggan-Gongshu Railway, which was the first railway in Zhejiang, and the Qiantang River Bridge, the first Chinese-designed steel bridge.^[7] With the completion of Phase 1 construction of an area of 17 hectares,^[8] the park was opened on 1 May 2014.^[9]

In April 2018, the park was included in the Grand Canal National Cultural Park.^[10] In December 2018, the historical sites of the railway was transformed into Hangzhou Railway Museum and the Sent-down Youth Memorial.^[11] A lighting system was installed since May 2020.^[8][12]

The White Pagoda in the park was at the Baita Hill, which is named after the pagoda, near the Qiantang River. Due to its geographical proximity to the site where the Grand Canal flows into the Qiantang River, the pagoda was used for ship navigation.^[13]: 190 The pagoda looks like a wooden structure but was made of stacked stone, which has nine floors, with a total height of 14 metres.^{[13]: 190 [14]: 1-2} Structured as an octagon, each floor of the pagoda shrinks in area until the tip of the pagoda. The stone reliefs on eight sides of the octagon represents the nine mountains and eight seas in Buddhism.^{[14]: 1–2}

In the 1930s, to repair the Liuhe Pagoda nearby, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin investigated the architectural design of the White Pagoda as a reference of contemporary buildings.^[15] In the 1960s and 1970s, there were repairment made by archaeologists to the pagoda. In 1988, the pagoda was selected as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level.^[16] In 1999, the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Gardens and Cultural Relics repaired and cleaned up the pagoda. In 2005, a CCTV system was installed around the pagoda.^[17] In the original construction plan of the White Pagoda Park in 2010, the White Pagoda was said to be protected by a transparent cover,^[5] which was not done when the park was finished in 2014.^[9]

There is no historical record that indicates the year of construction of the pagoda, yet its architectural style resembles those Buddhist Pagoda built during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (AD 907–960).^[18] During the Song dynasty, the area near the White Pagoda was a prosperous harbour.^[3] Song Chinese politician Fan Zhongyan described that there was a White Pagoda Temple in the region, which was long gone after Song.^[19][13] During the Southern Song dynasty, travelers to Hangzhou always purchased a guide map of Hangzhou, or called Dijing (simplified Chinese: 地经; traditional Chinese: 地經) in Chinese, near the White Pagoda which was the main waterway entrance to the city. A poem was therefore written on the wall of a temple near the White Pagoda to be sarcastic about the government in exile in Hangzhou giving up reclaiming the homeland of Han Chinese in Zhongyuan.^[20] In memory of the history, there was a Southern Song Dynasty Map Square built in the park.^[4]