The Yueyang Tower

The Yueyang Tower

For nearly two thousand years, China’s greatest poets have been inspired to put pen to paper by the views from this this gorgeous waterfront pavilion-tower. Dongting Lake stretches at its feet – horizons as vast an ocean, the sun glistening off the wavelets, cranes and storks dot water and sky, fishermen cast nets in the golden light. History and natural beauty meet here. The Yueyang tower has witnessed some of the most important scenes in China’s past – the Battle of the Red Cliffs in 208 AD which saw the end of the Han Dynasty, the naval assemblies of General Lu Su… The poignant melding of human impermanence and the timelessness of nature led the great writer and statesmen Fan Zhongyan to immortalise the tower in his 11^th Century Memorial, inscribed within the pavilion in astonishingly beautiful calligraphy.