Pagoda gift from Chinese sister city going up in park
TACOMA – Pagodas might be a common sight in China, but the 20-foot-tall structure going up along Ruston Way in Tacoma will be one of a kind as it tries to atone for a past cruelty.
Renderings show a traditional south Chinese-style wooden pagoda – pronounced “ting” in Mandarin – with eight marble columns, a tiled roof and a pair of 6-foot-tall stone lions guarding the entryway. Fish carvings will hang from the building’s corners for luck.
Its prefabricated parts arrived at Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park last week in three massive shipping containers. They were sent in late July as a gift from Fuzhou, one of Tacoma’s sister cities. It will cost about $150,000 to buy extra construction materials and host a delegation from China that is supervising the project.
Workers in China built the pagoda and prepared each component by hand.
They formed clay squares and heated them for the tiles. They carved the wood and formed intricate designs to decorate the roof. They painted pieces of the pagoda red and blue before disassembling the whole thing and packaging it up.
“Fuzhou decided to donate the building to signify the friendship between the two cities and show their support to the Chinese reconciliation effort,” said Lihuang Wung, Tacoma’s project manager.
The ting is being assembled in the 3.9-acre park that seeks to educate and heal wounds from one of Tacoma’s darkest historical episodes. In 1885, during tough economic times, an organized mob led by then-Mayor R. Jacob Weisbach expelled 200 Chinese immigrants who lived on the waterfront in Tacoma before burning down their settlements near the park that today is under construction.
A reconciliation project foundation was launched in 1982, and the park has been in the works for nearly two decades with the hope of creating a place to learn about the history of Chinese people in Tacoma.
The pagoda is the first building to be constructed in the park.
A four-person delegation recently arrived from Fuzhou to supervise the project and provide guidance as city workers and construction crews erect the pagoda. Here until Oct. 28 are project manager Zhang Fan, tilework master Weng Qi Cai, stonework master Weng Qi Hua and interpreter Olivia Han.
This is the first time they’ve assembled a pagoda in the United States, but they have built countless ones in China. They are, after all, masters in their trade.
There will be some differences. For example, in China, pagodas are constructed without nails. That does not meet building standards here because of earthquake activity, so nails will be used to secure the structure.