Yueyang Tower
One Of The Three Great Towers Of Jiangnan, Above Dongting Lake; National 5A Tourist Attraction · Yueyang, Hunan
A wooden tower on the walls of Yueyang looking out over Dongting Lake, and the only one of the three great towers of southern China to keep its ancient form - the present building is a Qing reconstruction of 1880, but it follows the old design, with three storeys, yellow glazed tiles and a roof shaped like a general's helmet, held together entirely by brackets and joinery without a single nail. A tower has stood here since the third century, when it served as a platform for reviewing the lake fleets of the Three Kingdoms. Its fame, though, rests on an essay: in 1046 the statesman Fan Zhongyan, writing from exile and never having seen the rebuilt tower, produced the Record of Yueyang Tower, whose closing line - that a scholar should be first to worry about the world's troubles and last to enjoy its pleasures - became one of the most quoted sentences in the language. Chinese visitors come to recite it, carved here on screens in famous calligraphy. Below the walls, Dongting Lake stretches to the horizon, and boats run out to Junshan Island with its tea gardens and bamboo.
Yueyang Tower, Dongting North Road, Yueyanglou District, Yueyang, Hunan, China
Daily, about 7:00-18:30 from May to September and 7:30-18:00 from October to April, with the tower closing slightly earlier (check).