Climb to the top of the legendary Qianchi Tower

Qianchi Tower Scenic Area is located in Shengshou Temple on the top of Dazhou Mountain, southwest of Jiayu Town, Xingyang City. Qianchi Tower, also known as Empress Cao Tower, was built during the reign of Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty (1023–1063). There is a legend about the origin of the tower's name. It is said that Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty selected a woman from the Cao family in Zhujiayu at the foot of Dazhou Mountain to be his empress. The empress missed her hometown, so Renzong ordered the construction of a "Home Tower" in the capital and Qianchi Tower in her hometown, so that she could see the tower in her hometown from the capital to relieve her homesickness. Since the tower needed to be a thousand feet high for the empress to see it, it was named Qianchi Tower or Empress Cao Tower. However, the Ming Dynasty stele in Shengshou Temple records that the tower was built to commemorate the eminent monk Dingguang of the Northern Song Dynasty. Qianchi Tower faces south and is a nine-story hexagonal pavilion-style brick tower. The tower is built with blue bricks measuring 0.315 meters long, 0.15 meters wide, and 0.055 meters thick, using a mixture of white ash and yellow soil as an adhesive. Each level of the tower has a corbelled eave, and except for the top two levels, each level has a symbolic flat seat above the corbelled eave. On the south side of the tower from the first to the seventh level, there are real and fake doorways, and inside the tower, there are two separate hexagonal tower core rooms. The original brick pavement of the tower has disappeared, and the foundation is a plain soil layer, with the entire tower actually sitting on the ground surface. The tower base is 0.57 meters high. On November 21, 1986, Qianchi Tower was announced as the second batch of key cultural relics protection units in Henan Province; on March 5, 2013, it was announced by the State Council as the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection units. On the cliff wall on the west side of Qianchi Tower, there is a spring with the inscription "Jiaobi Spring," which is said to be the place where Empress Cao moistened her brush while writing. The mountain where Qianchi Tower is located is surrounded by a stone wall, which is the "Yuefo Fort" built in the tenth year of the Xianfeng reign of the Qing Dynasty (1860). The fort is built according to the mountain's terrain, with an irregular plane, and has gates on the east, west, and south sides. Qianchi Tower Scenic Area