Yellow Crane Tower (Huanghelou)

One Of The Three Great Towers Of Jiangnan; National 5A Tourist Attraction · Wuhan, Hubei

The most celebrated tower in Chinese poetry, rising above the Yangtze River on Snake Hill in the Wuchang district of Wuhan. A watchtower was first built here in 223, during the Three Kingdoms period, and over the following centuries it was destroyed by war and fire and rebuilt again and again, each version recorded in paintings and verse. Legend tells of an immortal who flew away from the spot on the back of a yellow crane, and the Tang poet Cui Hao's lament that the crane is gone and only the empty tower remains became one of the most famous poems in the language - so famous that Li Bai is said to have declined to write another, though he later composed his own farewell to a friend sailing downriver from here. The last traditional tower burned in 1884, and the present building, completed in 1985 slightly inland from the old site, is a five-storey structure more than 50 metres high, with yellow glazed tiles and sixty upturned eaves that make it look like a crane spreading its wings. Inside are murals, models of the earlier towers and calligraphy of the famous poems, and from the top the view sweeps over the Yangtze, the 1957 Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge and the skyline of the three cities that form Wuhan. At night the tower and bridge are lit in gold.

Yellow Crane Tower Park, Snake Hill, Wuchang District, Wuhan, Hubei, China

Daily 8:30-17:20 with ticket sales ending about 17:00 and the park closing at 18:00; night visits about 19:30-22:00, last entry 21:30 (check).

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