闸口白塔

This guide to the White Pagoda at Zhakou in Hangzhou opens with a puzzle: four different sources give the nine-tiered stone tower four different heights, because it has been slowly falling apart for over a thousand years. Built near the end of the Wuyue kingdom before 960, it once stood inside a temple a Song poet wrote verses about, and its tiers are still carved with waves, warriors and bodhisattvas. You'll hear how architect Liang Sicheng and his wife Lin Huiyin examined its carvings in 1930 and connected them to another Hangzhou pagoda, and how a 2010 plan to seal the tower under glass never happened. Look closely at the west-facing carvings, where the river wind has worn some figures away entirely.