保俶塔

This guide to Baochu Pagoda in Hangzhou follows a hilltop tower whose story keeps changing shape: first raised in the mid-900s to protect a boy king sent as a hostage to a distant emperor, then collapsed, rebuilt, and collapsed again across roughly a thousand years. You'll hear about the uncle who first ordered it built out of fear for the boy's fate, and about the neglect that finally brought the tower down in 1924. Look up at the brick shell in front of you, solid from base to spire with no way inside.