Zoë Sheng

Chinese-Canadian - 02-Feb-21 -

I wasn't aware that these buildings were on the T-list when I first saw them. The area west of Chengdu features lots of these, but it could be that my bus tour didn't stop at one of the 15 that are planned to be inscribed - if anything, because I highly doubt the bad state of these towers and the massive reconstruction that has been needed to replace the fallen ones have any place on the world heritage list. I thus also didn't take any picture or not that I remember taking any, and am using this public domain one instead to give you an idea of what they look like. If you are thinking: San Gimignano meets Svanti - and you aren't far off because they were also used as high watchtowers and storage purposes. Oh, and Kaiping Dialou in Guangzhou are very different, I know it can be misleading with the name being similar.

So the main visit on my bus tour was, like you would know if you have ever partaken in a Chinese tour bus, shopping - in this case silver. The minorities have taken up the trade of flogging silverware to passing through clients from cutlery to ornaments and of course throwing all sorts of overpriced garbage like candy. I would not get out of my way to visit these towers so I suppose I'm happy to get it "ticked off" with any kind of passing by.