During the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, a magistrate of Wu saw Zhang Zhao's "The Story of Yueyang Tower" and was amazed at Zhang Zhao's calligraphy, exquisite carving and precious wood. He wanted to keep this treasure for himself, so he asked someone to copy a carved screen. However, he was dissatisfied with the ingenuity of the lettering, so he deliberately carved the word "Ju" that "lives high in the temple, so he worries about his people" to allude to the ulterior motives of the county officials.
When the county magistrate left office, he took the real thing with him. Unexpectedly, when the boat arrived at Dongting Lake, it was stormy and the boat capsized. The carved screen sank to the bottom of the lake. When the water level was low, it was salvaged by fishermen. When the Yueyang Tower was rebuilt in the Republic of China, Wu, a famous scholar in Baling, bought it for 200 yuan and hung it again.
Fan Zhongyan (989- 1052), born in Wuxian, Suzhou (now Wuxian, Jiangsu), was a politician, strategist and writer in the Northern Song Dynasty. Fan Zhongyan has a high literary accomplishment and wrote the famous Yueyang Tower.
Yueyang Tower is located at the foot of Baqiu Mountain in the northwest of Yueyang City, Hunan Province. It is three stories high and faces Dongting Lake. Its predecessor was the parade platform of Lu Su, commander-in-chief of the State of Wu during the Three Kingdoms period. In the fourth year of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty (7 16), it was said that a pavilion named Yueyang Tower was built in the former site of the parade platform, and he often went upstairs with the scribes to write poems.