Small Wild Goose Pagoda: Xi'an Travel Guide (4.6★)

A Tang tower with its top missing

The roofline stops abruptly. You walk the tree-lined path north from the museum and find 13 tiers of pale grey brick, stacked in tight bands of eaves that narrow toward a blunt, unfinished-looking summit. That summit is the giveaway. The pagoda was finished around 707–709 AD with 15 storeys, and the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake knocked the top two off. It stands about 43 metres tall today.

It belonged to Jianfu Temple (荐福寺), the monastery that kept the Buddhist texts the monk Yijing brought back from India by sea. In Mandarin it is Xiaoyan Ta (小雁塔). Since 2014 it has been part of the UNESCO-listed Silk Roads: Chang’an–Tianshan Corridor.

What you’re walking through

The pagoda is one piece of a larger compound. Plan on walking through:

• The pagoda itself. It is square and multi-eaved, an older shape than the stepped Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Long vertical cracks run up its faces, and local legend says earthquakes split it open and later sealed it shut again.
• The temple bell. A large Jin-dynasty iron bell hangs in its own pavilion. Its dawn ringing was one of the traditional “Eight Sights of Guanzhong” (雁塔晨钟).
• Xi’an Museum. It sits at the south end of the grounds and covers the city’s history from prehistory to the Qing dynasty, with strong Tang ceramics and Buddhist sculpture.
• The surrounding park. It has old cypresses, stone steles and paved paths. This is why the place feels like a garden and not a ticket queue.

The pagoda’s narrow interior stairs have opened and closed to climbers over the years. A climb is ticketed separately from the grounds when it runs, and the price is posted at the base.

Booking and behaving on temple grounds

Entry runs on reservations tied to ID. Foreign visitors book with a passport number through the Xi’an Museum’s official WeChat account or website, and staff check the passport at the gate. Book a day ahead in holiday periods, when slots fill.

• Paying: inside, payment is mostly WeChat Pay or Alipay. Link a foreign card to one of them before you arrive.
• Bags: expect a security scan at the gate, and leave large luggage at your hotel.
• Conduct: this was a working monastery. Don’t climb the stele bases or lean on the bell. Keep your voice down near the incense burners.
• Timing: coach tours aim for the Terracotta Army and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. An early start here usually means the paths are close to empty, and you get the pagoda without the selfie-stick crowd its more famous sibling gets.

Getting there and what’s next door

The closest metro stop is Nanshaomen Station on Lines 2 and 5. From there it is roughly a 15-minute walk west and south along Youyi Road to the gate. Taxis and DiDi drivers know it as “Xiaoyan Ta” or “Xi’an Bowuguan”.

The pagoda sits just south of the Ming city wall, so it pairs naturally with these:

• South Gate (Yongning Gate): about 1.5 km north. You can climb the wall there and rent a bike on top.
• Forest of Steles Museum (Beilin): inside the wall near the South Gate. It holds Tang calligraphy carved in stone.
• Big Wild Goose Pagoda: about 3 km south-east. Go there after this one to compare the two Tang designs on the same day.

Hours shift through the year and around holidays. Check the museum’s official site for this month’s schedule before setting out.