Jingzhen Octagonal Pavilion

As one of the important relics of Xishuangbanna, the Jing Zhen Octagonal Pavilion is located in Jingzhen village, Mengzhe, Menghai county, around 80km away from Jinghong city. The octagonal pavilion, called "Wo Su" in the Dai language, is a place where the senior Buddhist monks giving sutra, repenting, holding meetings and memorizing Buddha. With the history of almost 300 years, the pavilion acted as the hall of precept when it was built in 1704 AD, while now being a national relic protection unit. With the smart and magnificent shape, the octagonal pavilion is considered as the marvelous word in the Hinayana Buddhism and it is also a mark of the Dai minority architecture in ancient Xishuangbanna. It is also known for its unique architectural style.

Brick and stone structured, the octagonal pavilion consists of five parts, which are the base, the body, the eave, the plane and the roof. The architectural distribution is as follows: 亚 shaped house (the house has a shape like the Chinese character "亚"), 21 meters high, 10 meters in diameter at the bottom, 8 large planes, 31 small planes, 32 corners, 24 walls forming the pavilion room with four doors to the north, south, east, west, respectively which are drawn with minority patterns.

The front gate is in arched shape above which is a niche with the Buddha sculpture. The doors are made from the Red Chinese toon trees and are covered with Dai-style sunflowers and playing double dragons respectively. There is a wooden ladder connected with the stone step in front of the gate, where stands a fierce lion sculpture on one side and a holy dragon sculpture on the other side. The roof of the pavilion is wood-made and multiple-layered architecture in the shape of cone. The ten-layered pavilion is supported by 12 10-meter-long beams and is covered by eaves tiles just like the fish scale. What's more, the octagonal seems much more beautiful with the green ancient Bodhi Tree located between Jung Zhen Temple and the octagonal. The tree is so large that we need six or seven people to hold the trunk around which is also peculiar scenery.