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Seeking ways to prolong the life of a 950-year-old wooden pagoda in northern Shanxi Province by another millennium has resulted in scientists doing a great deal of head scratching.

The Sakyamuni Pagoda with unique architectural, religious and historical values is located at the Fogong (Buddha's Palace) Temple in Shanxi's Yingxian County -- 380 km southwest of Beijing. It was built in 1056 during the Liao Dynasty which ruled north China from 916 to 1125. China will celebrate the 950th anniversary of the pagoda on September 5.

The pagoda is made entirely of wood and held together by innumerable joints and a complex web of brackets without any nails or screws being used. It measures 67.31 meters in height -- as tall as a 20 storey modern building -- and 30.27 meters in diameter at the base.

It's an octagonal structure of nine stories with five visible from outside and four hidden away inside. The Buddhist statues on each storey and paintings on the inner walls of the first storey are all works of the Liao Dynasty.

During renovation work of the pagoda in 1974 a number of sutras were found some of which were hand-written and others block printed. They're important relics for the study of religion and printing methods of the Liao Dynasty. But they also reveal the political, economic and cultural developments of the Dynasty.

Although the pagoda has been severely tested through the centuries having been exposed to earthquakes, storms, lightening strikes and wars it's remained in one piece. But experts have warned the pagoda might succumb to another violent quake or storm as the tower is already tilting.

There's an obvious slant between the first and second floors and cracks in the interior wooden columns, said Chai Zejun, former director of the Shanxi Provincial Ancient Architecture Institute.

There are also 300 places within the pagoda which need repair. "We're worried about the ancient pagoda's safety," he said.

In fact consideration was given to repairing the pagoda 17 years ago when senior official Li Ruihuan saw it had been damaged and called for it to be better protected. A group of renowned experts on ancient architecture, including Chai and Luo Zhewen of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage have been investigating how best to repair and retain the relic.

But despite many years of effort a solution has not been found. All the proposals had their pros and cons and each plan met with objections.

Experts have proposed three options: dismantle it and rebuild it with the original timber parts and technology; elevate the top three stories to fix the two bottom floors and then place the top three back into position; reinforce the damaged and twisted parts with steel structures, explained Fu Xi'nian, a research fellow with the Institute of Architectural History under the Beijing-based China Architecture Design and Research Group.

"The first option will give us a new pagoda built by ourselves instead of our ancestors 950 years ago and its historical information and value will get lost," he said. "The second will turn out a pagoda with two new bottom floors but can we place the top three back exactly in their original positions. In the third option the bottom two floors will not be as spacious and bright as today when steel structures are installed inside," he said.

"Experts haven't reached consensus and I myself firmly oppose the first option," said Fu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

But 82-year-old Luo Zhewen, who has visited the pagoda many times since 1952, is a strong supporter of the first plan. "The simplest way is to dismantle it for rebuilding which has been a common practice for thousands of years," he said.

Ma Bingjian, director of the Beijing Municipal Institute of Ancient Architecture Design, another advocate of the first plan said, "To keep the pagoda is to keep the primary historical information."

In fact the second suggestion won the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in December 2002 when it organized a group of experts to decide on the three plans by voting because is was believed this option would cause less "disturbance" to the pagoda and "preserve more historical information," according to Ma.

After that the administration assigned the task of preparing an engineering plans respectively to Taiyuan University of Technology in Shanxi and Southeast University in east China's Jiangsu Province. But the plans produced by the two universities were turned down by a panel of experts who met in April this year in Shuozhou City which administers Yingxian County.

Both plans called for huge steel structures -- Southeast University's required 1,300 tons and Taiyuan University of Technology's needed 4,000 tons -- to be set up around the pagoda which would inevitably cause "severe disturbances" to the structure and produce "unpredictable consequences," Ma said.

In addition the plans would take as much as 90 million yuan (US$11.25 million) and about six to 10 years to complete the task, he said. "That is really terrifying," Ma commented.

The repair project seemed to come to a dead end but Zhou Ganzhi, former vice minister of construction, didn't think so.

"As far as I know the research has not stopped nor has the work of reinforcement and protection of the pagoda," said Zhou, also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. "The proposed plans are not absolutely independent of each other and some parts of them may be combined," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency September 4, 2006)