Bathed in the honeyed glow of the mid-March sun, 75-year-old Wang Yongxian explains the millennia-old Yingxian Wooden Pagoda to his 1.5 million followers in a video, as if introducing an old friend.
"This isn't just wood and nails, but a living record of Chinese ingenuity," says the man who drove more than three hours from his home in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, to visit the towering marvel of engineering.
A retired structural engineer and cultural heritage expert, Wang has dedicated his retirement years to a new kind of preservation: digital storytelling. In the past two years, he has taken to livestreaming to introduce young viewers to the ancient knowledge embedded in China's architectural relics.
Today, his subject is one of the world's tallest and oldest all-wooden pagodas, which was built in 1056 and has miraculously withstood centuries of war, weather, and earthquakes. As he manipulates a scaled-down replica of the pagoda and zooms in on the graceful overhangs on each tier, Wang explains how, in the absence of nails, interlocking wooden brackets known as dougong, a technique perfected over centuries, account for flexibility and endurance.
Wang has formed a special bond with the pagoda since he became involved in its protection and restoration in the early 1990s.
"This historical wooden pagoda is a rare treasure shaped by the passage of time, bearing the weight of culture and the knowledge of our ancestors. However, centuries of wind, frost, rain, snow, and earthquakes have left it scarred and weathered. Today, its structural safety faces serious challenges," he says.
One of the most contentious issues, Wang explains in the video, is whether to implement a full dismantling and overhaul of the pagoda, which some believe is the only way to fully address the risks posed by its age and increasing tilt.
But Wang is firmly against it.
