This Pagoda was built to hold all the religious stuff that Xuanzang a Buddhist priest collected all along the silk road during the Tang dynasty. He brought back lots of Sanskrit sutras, that he brought back from India and other countries, which they translated into Chinese. Xuanzang also wrote a travel book that ended up being very important.
The Pagoda got its name from a strange story of a goose falling out of the sky to feed the starving monks. I have heard the story twice now and I just still don’t totally understand it. In fact, I really don’t ‘get’ a lot of the Chinese legends. Obviously, I have trouble with any story that has symbolism. (for example, I was clueless while reading Life of Pi) Below is a link to a typical Chinese story. This story is about two lovers that lived in Hangzhou. Do me a favor and read it and see if you discover the point. http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/whitesnake.htm
Here is another link – some of these I actually understand (probably because the moral is usually given away for us dummies on the bottom of the page….)
http://www.chinapage.com/story/story.html
