The Tilt Left by the 1925 Earthquake

A municipal account describes the 1925 Dali earthquake as devastating houses across the town. It records that the central Qianxun Pagoda lost only its finial, while the northern and southern pagodas tilted but did not fall. The three towers enter the same earthquake history through different accounts of damage.

The same account says objects in a copper container at Qianxun Pagoda scattered and were looted. That detail changes the story from a tale of architectural survival to one about loss. A building may remain standing while the objects, records and relationships around it are damaged or dispersed. The earthquake’s legacy therefore cannot be reduced to a photograph of two leaning towers.

The municipal account also records that the Three Pagodas were included in the first national list of key cultural relics in 1961 and underwent state-funded repair between 1978 and 1981. These dates place the towers within a changing public system of heritage protection. The earthquake is one chapter in that chronology, followed by surveys, repair decisions and the movement of recovered objects into collections.