Baita District 白塔区

History

The district government traces the city more than 2,300 years back to Xiangping, which it describes as the earliest city in northeast China with a recorded administrative status confirmed by archaeology. The district was created in 1948 and named after the pagoda. An old city moat survives, the district has a provincial historic and cultural quarter, and it promotes a set of eight "new-era views", among them Pinghu Yanyue (平胡宴月) and Guanmiao Xizhao (关庙夕照).

What to see

The White Pagoda is a solid octagonal brick pagoda with dense eaves, 70.3 metres high, coated in white lime. Its date is disputed: temple steles of 1590 and 1842 attribute it to the Han, a pagoda inscription found in 1922 points to a Jin-dynasty reliquary tower for the mother of Emperor Shizong, finished in 1189, and a 1423 stele is read as placing it in the Liao. It once stood in Guangyou Temple (广佑寺), which Russian troops burned in 1900; a park was laid out around it in 1908. It became a national protected site in 1988. The district government calls it one of China's six famous pagodas, and Guangyou Temple, first founded in the Han, stands in the district.

Liaoyang Museum (辽阳博物馆), at 2 Zhongxin Road (中心路), opened on 1 October 1985 and moved to a new traditional-style building in 2009. Most of its more than 6,000 objects come from local excavations, with a focus on the Han, Liao–Jin and Ming–Qing periods; the treasures include the Wang Erlie (王尔烈) birthday screen and a Goryeo celadon pillow inlaid with chrysanthemums. Its old home, the 1921 villa of the banker Peng Xian (彭贤), next door, now houses a folk museum and a gallery of Han–Wei tomb murals.

Other sights listed by the district include the Han–Wei mural tombs, a national protected site; the former home of Wang Erlie, whom the district calls the talented scholar of the northeast, now a museum; and a memorial hall for the novelist Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹).