Yellow
Crane Tower
 Yellow
Crane Tower is one of the three great towers
of the south. It originally locates in Huanghe
ji of Snake Hill of Wuchang in Hubei Province.
At first it was a wine-shop apened by Mrs.Xin.
A Taoist priest wanted to thank Mrs.Xin
for her favour of free wines of thousand
cups, so he drew a magic crane on the wall
and told it to dance to livethings up before
he left. After that this wineshop was always
full of guests and the business is booming.
The Taoist priest revisited the wineshop
after ten years. This time he played the
flute and then rode on the crane to fly
op to the sky. Therefore Mrs.Xin built a
tower named Yellow her get rich.
Yellow Crane Tower is on the
Yangtze River and locates on the top of
snake Hill, which looks outstanding, splendid
and magnificent. Naturally it becomes an
intrersting place within the four seas.
Celebrities in successive Zhang Juzhen etc.
have come here to make merry and compose
poetry. Cui Hao's poet "Yellow Crane
Tower" has been regarded as an excellent
work for a long time and many people can
recite it. This poet has made a lot of people
to remember Yellow Crane Tower, and so it
is a natural thing for them to feel excited
when the new tower has been completed. There
are a lot of touching legends about this
tower, one of which being as follows: A
man named Fei Wei practise austerities to
be an immortal in Yellow Crane Hill, and
then he go to heaven riding on a yellow
crane. CuiHao's poet was concerned with
legend, which described as follows:Where
long ago a yellow crane bore a sage to heaven,Nothing
is left now but the Yellow Crane Terrace.The
yellow crane never revisited earth,And white
clouds are flying without him forever.Every
tree in Hanyan becomes clear in the water,And
Parrot Island is a nest of sweet grasses.But
I look toward, and twilight grows dark.With
a mist of grief on the river waves.
 The
old Yellow Crane Tower was a three-storey
building, which was 9 zhangs and 9 chis
high (with 7 chis high bronze top). The
new tower looks very magnificent with five
storeies, which is 51.4 meters high in all
(with 5 meters high gourd shape top) and
20 meters than the old one. The ground floor
of the old tower is 15 meters wide in each
side and the new one's ground floor is 20
meters wide. Therefore we can say that Yellow
Crane Tower has been reconstructed instead
of being renowated. The new tower was designed
according to people's modern needs and varying
aesthetic conceptions, and at the same time
it has kept some characteristics of the
old one.
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