A Pagoda Falls, a Crypt Reopens

The crypt survived because it was forgotten. Sealed in 874 under Emperor Yizong, the last of the great Tang receptions, the underground palace lay undisturbed beneath successive pagodas for more than a thousand years. The Ming rebuilt a thirteen-storey brick pagoda over it in the sixteenth century, and there matters rested until heavy rain in 1981 brought half the structure crashing down, leaving a precarious ruin. When conservators dismantled the remains to rebuild in 1987 they uncovered the sealed stone door of the digong beneath the foundations.

The excavation that followed, between 5 and 12 May, revealed the intact Tang deposit. The temple has since been restored and greatly expanded; the original relics and treasures are conserved and displayed in the Famen Temple Museum, while a vast modern namaskara stupa hall, opened in 2009, enshrines the true finger-bone relic for veneration. Famen is today both a functioning pilgrimage temple and one of the most studied Buddhist archaeological sites in China.