The pagoda is situated in Asitana Village in Turpan, which is also called Sanbao Village. There was a big Buddhist temple in the village from the sixth to the seventh century, but the temple was destroyed a long time ago and only the pagoda remains.
The huge box-shaped pagoda, built of rammed loess, is inscribed with Buddhist scriptures. It has a square ground plan with each side measuring twenty metres long. About twenty meters high, it has a square base that supports square mud columns at each corner and the square main body in the center. The pagoda's ball-shaped steeple has been destroyed. Niches on all four sides of the pagoda's main body contain murals.
Taizang Pagoda?s shape is similar to that of box-shaped pagodas inscribed with Buddhist scriptures and its steeple is similar to steeples of earlier pagodas depicted in sculptures and murals in the Yungang grottoes and the Mogao grottoes in Dunhuang and also to steeples of pagodas with four doors. The pagoda is an early example of such pagodas. It is difficult to discover in India what the eighty-fore thousand pagodas built by Asoka looked like, but some clues are available in China. Taizang Pagoda was built very early and is thus a very important relic.
