Yueyang 岳阳Yuèyáng

About Yueyang

Yueyang stands on the eastern shore of Dongting Lake beside the Yangtze, and Yueyang Tower rises from its old west wall to look across to Junshan Island, home of the rare yellow tea Junshan Yinzhen; the Northern Song statesman Fan Zhongyan made the view famous in prose. To the south, the Miluo River is where the poet Qu Yuan is said to have drowned himself, a story tied to the Dragon Boat Festival, and Zhangguying Village keeps a Ming clan settlement of linked courtyards.

What to eat in Yueyang

• Junshan Yinzhen yellow tea (君山银针)
• Pingjiang dried tofu (平江香干)
• Latiao spicy gluten strips (辣条)

Featured places in Yueyang

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  Yueyang Tower 岳阳楼

  A helmet-roofed tower above Dongting Lake, famed for one 11th-century essay

  Best time: Apr–May, Sep–Oct · Time needed: 2–3 hours · 5A scenic area · National heritage site

Listed sites in Yueyang

25 sites in Yueyang are on the official lists. Those with a page of their own link to it; the rest open as cards on the map.

• Junshan Island 君山岛 5A scenic area
  A hilly island of 0.96 km² with 72 small peaks in Dongting Lake, about 9 km west of Yueyang Tower, tied to the legend of Emperor Shun's two consorts Ehuang and Nüying, whose tears are said to have spotted the bamboo that grows around their tomb here.
• 6501 Underground Tunnels 6501景区 4A scenic area · on the map
  An unfinished man-made tunnel complex in the hills of Zhongfang, south-east of Linxiang, whose purpose has never been officially disclosed: three levels of passages, halls and shafts run for more than 10 km and cover over 80,000 m².
• Dayunshan National Forest Park 大云山 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
  A forested mountain of 911 m on the border of Yueyang County and Linxiang, a national forest park since 1996 and an old Daoist and Buddhist pilgrimage hill whose restored temples draw worshippers from Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, above all at the fairs on the third day of the third lunar month and the ninth day of the ninth.
• Former Residence of Ren Bishi 任弼时故居 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
  The birthplace of Ren Bishi (1904–1950), a senior Communist military and political leader who was political commissar of He Long's Second Front Army on the Long March, in Bishi town in southern Miluo.
• Jiangtun Bay (Finless Porpoise Bay) 江豚湾 4A scenic area · on the map
  A reach of the Yangtze bank at Qigongling in Junshan District, about 107 ha, where the Hualong sand and gravel wharf was demolished in 2017 and the shore cleared and replanted.
• Junshan Wild Lotus World 君山野生荷花世界 4A scenic area · on the map
  A lake of wild lotus at Tuanhu in Junshan District, where more than 10,000 mu (about 670 ha) of lotus grows in continuous beds and over 300 cultivated varieties have been added.
• Mufu Mountain (Tianyue Mufushan) 幕阜山 4A scenic area
  The main peak of the Mufu range, about 1,600 m high, on Hunan's border with Hubei and Jiangxi in northern Pingjiang, a national forest park since 2005 that stays cool even in midsummer.
• Pingjiang Uprising Memorial Hall 平江起义纪念馆 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
  The former Tianyue Academy, founded in 1720 and moved to this site in 1867, a complex of white gable walls and grey tiles now within the grounds of Pingjiang No. 1 Middle School, where Peng Dehuai, Teng Daiyuan and Huang Gonglüe launched the Pingjiang Uprising on 22 July 1928 and formed the Fifth Red Army.
• Quzi Cultural Park and Qu Yuan Temple 屈子文化园 4A scenic area · National heritage site
  The memorial temple of Qu Yuan, the Warring States poet whose drowning in the Miluo River is remembered at the Dragon Boat Festival, stands at the foot of Yusi Hill by the river: its brick-and-timber halls around three courtyards were moved here in 1754 after floods, the triple gate carries 13 reliefs of his life, and a stele forest of 356 carved inscriptions was added in 1995.
• Sheng'an Temple 圣安寺 4A scenic area · on the map
  A large Buddhist temple on the northern spur of Lengjia Hill above South Lake, rebuilt from 1997 by monks from Nanyue on the site of a Tang-dynasty monastery whose abbot Wuxing was commemorated in inscriptions by the writer Liu Zongyuan.
• Shiniuzhai National Geopark 石牛寨 4A scenic area · on the map
  A Danxia sandstone landscape of about 62 km² in north-eastern Pingjiang, a national geopark of long red cliff walls, rock 'waterfalls', natural bridges and narrow slot gorges, named after an old stone stronghold whose walls survive for some 2 km; the main source of the Miluo River rises here.
• Wujianshan National Forest Park 五尖山国家森林公园 4A scenic area · on the map
  A wooded hill of five peaks, the highest 588 m, rising just south-west of Linxiang city, a national forest park since 2008 that covers about 2,880 ha with forest cover of 98%.
• Yangsha Lake Resort 洋沙湖 4A scenic area · on the map
  A resort district built around the 4.3 km² Yangsha Lake on the southern edge of Xiangyin town, opened in 2017 and themed on the area's old fishing-village culture.
• Zhangguying Village 张谷英村 4A scenic area · National heritage site
  A clan village of the Zhang family below Bijia Hill in south-eastern Yueyang County, where connected houses built from the Ming and extended through the Qing form three great blocks, Dangdamen, Wangjiaduan and Shangxinwu, with 1,732 rooms, 206 skylit courtyards and 62 lanes over more than 50,000 m².
• Zuo Zongtang Cultural Park and Memorial Temple 左宗棠文化园 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
  A memorial park of about 18 ha in Xiangyin, the home county of Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885), the Qing general and statesman who fought the Taiping and other rebellions and led the reconquest of Xinjiang, and whose name was borrowed for the dish General Tso's chicken.
• Cishi Pagoda 慈氏塔 National heritage site
  A solid seven-storey octagonal brick pagoda 39 m tall on Taqian Street near the lakeshore, one of the oldest surviving pagodas in Hunan, with Buddha niches on four sides of each upper storey.
• Dajitou Jetty 大矶头 National heritage site · on the map
  A man-made jetty of 1879 on the south bank of the Yangtze at Lucheng, built out from a hill and natural reefs as three stepped granite platforms covering some 1,500 m², where boats on the river were towed and navigation markers set up.
• Former New Fourth Army Liaison Office, Jiayi 新四军平江通讯处旧址 National heritage site · on the map
  A pair of two-storey timber shop-houses on Upper Street in the old market town of Jiayi, once the Tianhe general store and the Yichang pharmacy, which from 1938 housed the New Fourth Army's Pingjiang liaison office together with the Communist special committee for the Hunan–Hubei–Jiangxi border.
• Former Pingjiang County CPC Committee (Mao Jianqing's House) 中共平江县委旧址 National heritage site · on the map
  The 1919 country house of Mao Jianqing (1891–1932), a graduate of Tokyo Imperial University who became Pingjiang's Communist Party secretary in 1927 and moved the county committee into his family home.
• Hunan–Hubei–Jiangxi Soviet Sites, Changshou 湘鄂赣省苏维埃旧址 National heritage site · on the map
  Three sites in and near Changshou, an old market town on the upper Miluo River in eastern Pingjiang, added in 2019 to the national listing of the Hunan–Hubei–Jiangxi revolutionary base, whose main sites are at Wanzai in Jiangxi.
• Longjiao Mountain Yao Relics 龙窖山 National heritage site · on the map
  In the Longjiao Mountains of north-eastern Linxiang, on the Hunan–Hubei border, lie the remains of a highland settlement area that the Yao people regard as Qianjiadong, their ancestral homeland, occupied from the Western Jin to the Northern Song until its people moved away after about 1010.
• Xiangyin Confucius Temple 湘阴文庙 National heritage site
  Founded in the Northern Song and moved to this site in the early 1100s, Xiangyin's temple of Confucius lost many of its halls to Japanese bombing during the war against Japan, and a road cut through it in 1954 now separates the front court from the main buildings.
• Yueyang Confucian Temple 岳阳文庙 National heritage site · on the map
  Founded in 1046 by Teng Zijing, the prefect who rebuilt Yueyang Tower, the city's Confucian temple and school keeps its double-eaved Dacheng Hall, 16 m high, whose nanmu columns, lotus-carved column bases and beams are Song-dynasty work beneath a roof rebuilt in 1872.
• Yuezhou Customs House 岳州关 National heritage site · on the map
  Hunan's first customs house, opened at Chenglingji in 1899 when Yuezhou, where the Yangtze meets Dongting Lake, became the first port the Qing government opened to foreign trade on its own initiative.
• Yuezhou Kiln Site Museum 岳州窑遗址博物馆 National heritage site · on the map
  Yuezhou ware, the celadon made along the lower Xiang River from the Han to the Tang, was ranked among the six best wares for tea bowls in Lu Yu's 8th-century Classic of Tea, and 26 kiln sites have been found on both banks around Xiangyin.

On the map

Open Yueyang on the illustrated map to see its outline, its places and listed sites together, and to add them to a trip.

Learn more

• Wikipedia
• Official website
• Wikipedia (Chinese)