A roof of yellow tiles shaped like a general's helmet gleams above Dongting Lake: Yueyang Tower alone justifies the ships' stop. The long Yangtze cruises between Chongqing and Shanghai call at this Hunan city, set at the precise point where China's second-largest freshwater lake empties into the river. From the deck, you watch the waters mingle, convoys of barges pass one another and a suddenly immense horizon open up; the mooring is a few minutes' drive from the historic site.

The tower all of China recites

Originally built as a naval review platform in the Three Kingdoms period and rebuilt through the dynasties, the current building dates from the 19th century: three storeys of dark wood whose framework is said to hold without a single nail. Its glory comes from a text of 1046, Fan Zhongyan's "Memorial to Yueyang Tower", which generations of schoolchildren have learned by heart; its most famous sentence invites us to worry about the world before thinking of our own happiness. Chinese visitors murmur the lines as they climb the stairs, and the panorama does the rest: sails and cargo ships set on an expanse that merges with the sky, shifting mists, barely sketched islands. With the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan and the Pavilion of Prince Teng, the monument forms the trio of great poetic lookouts of southern China, and it is the only one whose old structure survives.

Around the ramparts

The building rests on a section of old ramparts by the water; below, a restored lane lines up houses with awnings, calligraphy stalls and tea vendors. Here you taste Hunan cuisine, generous with chilies and lake fish, before strolling along the shore where boats sway lazily against their moorings. Teapots pass from table to table, and shopkeepers take the time to tell anyone showing a little curiosity about the memorable flood or the fishing of days gone by.

Junshan, the island of yellow tea

Offshore lies Junshan Island, one square kilometre of tea gardens and groves reached by boat. Its bushes produce "silver needles", one of the rarest yellow teas in the country, once reserved for the imperial court. The spotted bamboo growing on the island feeds an ancient legend: the tears of two wives mourning Emperor Shun are said to have marked its stems forever. The excursion depends on the time available and the lake level; ask on board before counting on it.

The cradle of dragon boats

Finally, the region claims the origin of a tradition known even on our own rivers: it was in the Miluo River, south of the lake, that the poet Qu Yuan threw himself in patriotic despair, and dragon boat races have since commemorated the efforts of the villagers who rushed to save him. Yueyang maintains this heritage with fervour; the slender boats belong to the local imagination as much as the old lookout itself.

Port of call at a glance

As the ship rejoins the river, many reread Fan Zhongyan's sentence translated in the onboard leaflet. It nicely sums up this short and rich stop: an immense body of water, a monument that has crossed the centuries, and the simple, thousand-year-old idea that a landscape is also valued for what it inspires in those who take the time to contemplate it.