Today we will go and visit the Yueyang Tower, Yueyang Tower lies in the west of Yueyang city, nearby the Dongting Lake, it is listed as three famous towers in the south of Yangtze River, together with Yellow Crane Tower at Wuhan, Hubei province and Tengwang Tower at Nanchang, Jiangxi province.
Yueyang Tower was originally built for soldiers to rest on and watch out. In the Three kingdoms Period, Lusu, General of Wu State, trained his soldiers here and then rebuilt it as a tower to review his troops.
In the forth year (716 A.C) of Kaiyuan of Tang Dynasty, General Zhangshuo was dispatched to defend at yuezhou and he rebuilt it into a Tower named South Tower, and then Yueyang Tower. In the forth year (1044 A.C) of Qingli of Song Dynasty, Teng Zijing was stationed at Baling Jun, the ancient name of Yueyang city. In the second year, he had the Yueyang Tower repaired and had poems by previous poets inscribed on the walls of the Tower. Fan Zhongyan, a great artist and poet, was invited to write the well-known poem about Yueyang Tower, in his essay which entitled《 A Panegyric of the Yueyang Tower》, the two sentences Fan writes :“ Be the first to worry about the troubles across the land, the last to enjoy universal happiness” have for thousands of years been a well-quoted dictum and made the tower even better known then before.
The architectural style of Yueyang Tower is quite unique. The main tower is 21.35 meters high with 4 columns, 3 stories, flying eave, helmet roof and wood construction, the helmet-roof of such a large dimension is a rarity among the ancient architectures in China.
Entering the tower, you"ll pass the famous couplet: "Dongting is the water of the world, Yueyang is the tower of the world." Moving on, there is a platform (Dianjiang tai) that once functioned as the training ground for the navy of Three-Kingdom period general Lusu. To its south is the Huaifu Pavilion in memory of Dufu (712-770AD), who was the famous poet during the Tang dynasty and wrote the famous poem <> and later died in the city. Stepping out of the Xiaoxiang Door, the Saint Plum Pavilion (Xianmei ting) and the Three Drunkards Pavilion (Sanzui ting) can be seen standing on two sides. In the garden to the north of the tower is the tomb of Xiaoqiao, the wife of Zhouyu, another famous Three-Kingdom general.
