Yueyang Tower

Tang-origin pavilion overlooking Dongting Lake. The third of the Three Great Towers of the South. Famous for Fan Zhongyan's 11th-century essay.

Yueyang Tower stands on the western shore of Dongting Lake — China's second-largest freshwater lake — on the site of a viewing pavilion that has existed in some form since the Eastern Han period. The original military observation tower was rebuilt as a literary pavilion by the Tang general Zhang Yue in 716 CE; successive reconstructions followed as floods, fires, and warfare periodically destroyed the timber structure. The current three-storey wooden building, 19.72 metres high with a distinctive yellow-tiled double-eave helm-shaped roof, dates from a Qing reconstruction of 1880 and is considered a faithful continuation of the historical form.

Yueyang Tower occupies an important position in Chinese literary culture for a specific reason: in 1046 CE, the Northern Song statesman and reformer Fan Zhongyan wrote the essay 'Yueyang Tower' (Yueyang Lou Ji) at the request of his friend Teng Zongding, who had rebuilt the tower and wanted a commemorative text. Fan Zhongyan used the occasion to articulate a statement of Confucian civic duty: that the true official worries about the people's concerns before they worry, and enjoys the pleasures of peace only after others have enjoyed them — 'first in the world to worry about the world's troubles; last in the world to enjoy the world's pleasures.' The line became one of the most quoted formulations of public service ethics in Chinese culture and was memorised by generations of examination candidates. The essay is inscribed on tablets displayed in the tower.

The site includes several associated structures and gardens; Junshan Island, a small island in Dongting Lake visible from the tower and accessible by boat, grows the tea known as Junshan Yinzhen (Silver Needle), one of China's ten famous teas. The combination of tower visit and Junshan Island boat trip makes a reasonable half-day from Yueyang city.