Climbing the Yueyang Tower, a pearl beside Yangtze

The Streaming down the Yangtze team has arrived in the city of Yueyang, Hunan Province and visited Yueyang Tower, a famous local site.

Yueyang Tower. [File Photo: IC]

The tower is made of wood, but no nails were used in its construction.

Yueyang Tower has over 1700 years of history, including suffering damage and being rebuilt several times.

For more on this historical site and the city, we are now joined with Yang Guang, CRI's reporter covering the journey.

What can you tell us about the Tower of Yueyang and its history?

“Yueyang Tower is an ancient Chinese tower on the shore of Dongting Lake, one of the biggest freshwater lakes of China. Since ancient times, it has been enjoying the good reputation that Dongting Lake is the best among lakes, and Yueyang Tower is incomparable among towers. The building is one the Three Great Towers in Jiangnan; the other two are located in Wuhan and Nanchang. Yueyang Tower itself is with yellow tiles and overhanging eaves. Its roof, covered with yellow glazed tiles, has a smooth curve, just as the general's helmet in ancient China. It is the only ancient building with the helmet roof structure in China. Legend has it that this helmet roof was specially designed to commemorate a general, who originally built the former of Yueyang tower on the top of the city wall by Dongting Lake, to train and review the navy. So the original function of the tower is mainly military. But it’s the article named the Memorial of Yueyang Tower had made the tower famous and since then many ancient Chinese writers and poets came to Yueyang Tower to overlook the beautiful Dongting Lake; they have written many more articles about the building and its view. The architecture of Yueyang Tower is very special because it is of pure wood structure with nearly 20 meters high. With the technology of ancient China, such building is very difficult to be constructed. Moreover, the whole tower was built without any foundation beneath it. People in Yueyang jokingly said if there was a crane big enough to hang the tower up, the building can be moved to another place without any damage. Yueyang Tower was destroyed and rebuilt amid several fires or floods. The existing Yueyang Tower was built in the Qing dynasty, more specifically 1880.”

What is the contemporary role of Yueyang City along the Yangtze River?

“The city of Yueyang mainly functions in the area of trade and transportation as it’s located along the Yangtze River. It is the only international trade port city in Hunan Province and a famous port city in China, at the same time, having direct international ship routes with Australia, Japan, South Korea and many other Southeast countries. Yueyang's comprehensive economic strength ranks second only to Changsha, the provincial capital. In1992, Yueyang was designed by central authority as the first batch of cities along the Yangtze that was fully open to trade. And now Yueyang port has its own bonded area, which means the tariff of foreign goods can be omitted and the procedures of international trade are maximumly simplified in Yueyang port. Besides trade and transportation, Yueyang’s Dongting Lake also functions as a flood basin of Yangtze River. With its huge reservoir, through history it has prevented many big floods damaging farmland and cities of downstream Yangtze like Wuhan and Nanjing.”

That was CRI's Yang Guang, Streaming down the Yangtze River.