East and West Tower

We met a couch surfer, LongTian,  and she showed us around the area took us to see the two towers. Pagodas in Kunming. They were built during the Tang dynasty. The one tower was destroyed in an earth quack and rebuilt a couple of times. It was good to have LongTian with us as she was able to tell us about the tower's history from the sign where as we would have just been able to look at it but not have known anything as it was all in Chinese. Having a guide made all the difference. Matthew and I really had a good time, where as in the past we wandered around and saw but didn't really understand what we were seeing. She told us all about the areas we went to and offered to help us barter for anything we needed. She really made it possible for us to see different things we hadn't in the past. The pagodas were in a line with each other. The had thirteen tears and rosters on the roof. Now I have no idea what there were rosters on the top so no point in asking. The Western Pagoda had quite a history and was badly damage during an earth quake and rebuilt, it was destroyed again during world war II and was rebuilt again after that. If you look on wikipedia it will tell you different. That the Eastern was the one that was rebuilt, however after seeing them both it was the Western that had a rebuilt base. It didn't have the same construction. They were both pretty amazing. The Eastern one you could climb and walk around more. It had a really pretty garden around it. Some pictures included here are from the garden. It had paths the went in among the flowers. I really like all the gardens here. It makes it feel a little less like a really big city.