China’s Pagodas

On my Spring Trip, this year, I visited two pagodas in the cities of Hong Zhou and Tong Lu. Until I went on the 8th grade Spring Trip I had not fully appreciated China’s beautiful Pagodas. I learned some fun facts about Pagoda’s on my trip this year as well. Firstly, did you know that Pagodas must have an odd number of levels? Additionally, that all Pagoda’s must be a geometric shape? I never knew how much I liked Pagodas untill I visited them on my Spring Trip. Because we saw so many (well two) Pagodas on our Spring Trip, one of the activities we had in group time was to construct one ourselves! We were put into groups of fives and sixes for construction. Our “rubric” was that it had to stand without help (of course), we have to have an odd number of levels, and that it must be a geometric shape. We had a bunch of plastic cups, chop sticks, cardboard, scissors, and tape. So I came up with the idea of cutting the top’s of the cups off and then cutting them so that they became one curved “sheet” of plastic then taping a few together, end to end, to make a circle. Then put cardboard as well as chopsticks taped together, to make the levels. It was almost as tall as me with four flags symbolizing the nationalities of our group: Dutch flag, American flag, Chinese flag, and the Korean flag. I thought it was by far the best, but unfortunately we only got 2nd place because it was a bit unstable 🙁 . I definitely learned a lot about Pagodas on my Spring Trip and look forward to seeing more of them in China!

Pagoda #1