Tiger Hill Pagoda

Listen first. Leaves move in the trees around you, and footsteps scrape on old stone steps. Somewhere a guide raises a small flag and calls to a tour group. Now lift your eyes to the top of the hill. A tall brick tower rises above the canopy, warm brown and faded grey. Look at it for a moment, and you will notice that it does not stand quite straight.

This is the Yunyan Pagoda, the Cloud Rock Temple Pagoda. Most people simply call it the Tiger Hill Pagoda. It has crowned this low hill on the northwest edge of Suzhou for more than a thousand years. Builders started it in the middle of the tenth century, at the very end of the Five Dynasties period. They finished it around 961, in the first years of the Song dynasty. It is one of the oldest buildings you can still visit in this region.

First, the shape. The pagoda has eight sides and seven storeys. It stands roughly forty-seven metres tall. Almost all of it is brick, and this was unusual for its time and place. Many pagodas in southern China were built with timber frames, and fire and rot destroyed them over the centuries. Here, the builders imitated wood in brick. Look at the corners and the bands between the storeys. You can see brick shaped to look like brackets and beams, a wooden building copied in fired clay.

Now the lean. Many visitors come to Tiger Hill because of it. The tower tilts to the north and slightly to the east, and the top sits more than two metres off centre. People sometimes call it China's leaning tower. The reason is under your feet. The foundation sits partly on rock and partly on softer soil. Over many centuries, one side settled more than the other, and the whole structure slowly moved.

Here is a detail that most visitors miss. The pagoda did not wait a thousand years to start leaning. Engineers who studied it believe that it had already begun to tilt while it was still being built. You can see some evidence for this in the upper storeys. The builders seem to have corrected the angle as they went higher, so the tower is slightly bent and not perfectly straight. So it was never a straight tower that later fell over. It has carried this posture from the beginning.

The tilt worried later generations. Over the centuries, fire damaged the tower, and its wooden eaves and balconies were lost. That is why the outside looks so bare today. In the twentieth century, engineers worked several times to stop the movement. They bound the body of the tower with supports and strengthened the ground below it. The work was careful, because the goal was to hold the lean in place, not to remove it. The tilt is now part of the tower's identity.

The repairs also led to a second surprise. During restoration work in the 1950s, workers found objects hidden inside the pagoda. These included Buddhist sutras and relics, sealed in the structure by the people who built it. They were placed there as acts of devotion, and they were not meant for anyone to see. Some of these finds are now kept in museum collections. The tower held these objects quietly for about a thousand years.

But the hill is older than the pagoda, and its stories go back much further. Tiger Hill is linked to Helü, a king of the ancient state of Wu. Wu ruled this area about 2,500 years ago, and Suzhou was its capital. Legend has it that Helü was buried on this hill. According to the old tale, a white tiger appeared three days after the burial and crouched on top of the tomb to guard it. That is how the hill got its name.

As you walk up, you will pass places connected to this legend. There is a wide, flat stretch of rock known as the Thousand Man Rock. Locals say that the workers who built the king's tomb were killed there, so that the location would stay secret. A reddish colour on the stone is sometimes explained as their blood, though it is just the natural colour of the rock. Treat this as folklore. It is a dark story, and it has been told on this hill for many centuries.

Near the rock is the Sword Pond. It is a narrow, deep pool between steep cliff walls, and the air there is cool and damp. One popular tale says that the king was buried with thousands of fine swords, and that the tomb lies somewhere under this water. People have searched and argued about it for a very long time. The carved characters on the cliff walls come from different periods, and visitors have looked at them for generations.

Tiger Hill has been a place for poets, painters and picnics for many centuries. A saying often attributed to the Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo says that a visit to Suzhou without a visit to Tiger Hill is a regret for life. Whether he really said it or not, Suzhou people repeat it often. For generations, families came here in spring and autumn for outings, music and tea. For people in this city, the hill was a place to relax as well as a place for worship.

When you reach the top, take a slow walk around the base of the pagoda. Its appearance changes as you move. From one side, the lean looks dramatic. From another side, it almost disappears. Look up at the rows of small arched openings, one level after another. Look at the softened brick edges, which wind and rain have worn smooth over many centuries. Small plants sometimes grow in the cracks. The tower is quiet, but it is still changing slowly.

Before you go back down, stand still for a moment. Feel the uneven stone under your shoes. This same ground pushed the tower off balance, and the tower has stood on it for a thousand years. Below you, Suzhou continues into the distance, with canals, gardens and new towers. As you walk down the steps, turn back once and look up. Notice the slight angle of the pagoda against the sky. It has held that angle through many changes of dynasty, and it still holds it today.