History
The Pavilion of Prince Teng was first built in 653 AD, by Li Yuanying (simplified Chinese: 李元婴; traditional Chinese: 李元嬰; pinyin: Lǐ Yuányīng), the younger brother of Emperor Taizong of Tang and uncle of Emperor Gaozong of Tang. Li Yuanying was enfeoffed as Prince Teng in 639 and spent his early years in Suzhou. In 652 he was assigned the governorship of Nanchang where the pavilion served as his townhouse. Twenty years later, the building was rebuilt by the new governor. Upon its completion, a group of local intelligentsia gathered to compose prose and poetry about the building. The most famous of these is the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng (Chinese: 滕王阁序记; pinyin: Téngwáng Gé Xùjì) by Wang Bo. This piece made the Pavilion of Prince Teng a household name in China down to the present day.
The Pavilion was to be destroyed and rebuilt a total of 29 times over the next centuries. The building itself changed shape and function many times. The penultimate construction was in the Tongzhi era of the Qing Dynasty. That building was destroyed in October 1926 during the chaotic warlords era.
Read more about this topic: Pavilion Of Prince Teng
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)