The Porcelain Tower is in Nanjing, China, out on the banks of the Yangtze River. The Chinese people called it the Boa’ensi or the “Temple of Gratitude”. The base shape is octagonical. The base is about 95 feet in diameter; the tower itself is about 9 stories tall, which is about 250 feet high. When the tower was being built it was planned to be 13 stories tall and a total height of 330 feet. Every block in the tower was dried out in the blazing sun during the day and in the night there was 140 lamps to dry them out. The bricks were made of brilliant white porcelain that would shine in sunlight. As the stories went up it narrowed because if they were all the same size it would collapse on top of everything. A large spire came from the eighth story all the way up to the roof. The spiral staircase went up 130 steps. In 1801 a bolt of lightning struck and knocked of the top three stories. Soon after that the Taiping Rebels gained control of the city and destroyed the Porcelain Tower of Najing