The 2nd Year (826) of Baoli Period

Prefect Niu Sengru renovated Ezhou (Wuchang) on a large scale. At that time, he was also Military Commissioner of Wuchang and Surveillance Commissioner of Five Prefectures—Ezhou, Yuezhou, Mianzhou, Qizhou and Huangzhou. Reportedly, the tower was first separated from the city wall during that renovation. That is to say, the tower alone became a scenic edifice.

The 10th Year (815) of Yuanhe Period

Poet Bai Juyi was relegated to Jiangzhou. When he stopped at Wuchang, Bai took in a greeting banquet on the tower. On that occasion he wrote down a poem Enjoying the Banquet by Censor Liu and Judge Cui and Relishing Together the Splendid Scenery.

The 1st Year (765) of Yongtai Period

Yan Boli compiled Records of Yellow Crane Tower. This monograph makes alive local legend, unique geography, past personages, their sentiments and other things about the stately tower. This historical text is well-written and thus well-received. Yet the book gives another account of the legend, “After attaining immortalhood, Fei Yi ever took a rest here riding a yellow crane.” It thus made the fabulous legend evolve into a new stage.

The 13th Year (754) of Tianbao Period

Li Bai wrote Seeing off Chu Yi to Wuchang more than 30 years after his first touring here. Over the past years, Li Bai had created lots of impromptu poems about this tower, with 16 pieces like Seeing off Meng Haoran for Guangling at Yellow Crane Tower intact to this day. Li is likely the poet writing more poems than anybody else in this regard.

The 16th Year (728) of Kaiyuan Period

Meng Haoran left Yangzhou for his hometown Xianyang in the end of that year. Meng stopped at Wuchang midway and wrote down Boating up to Wuchang. Around the time, the writer composed other touching poems like Sending off Wang the Ninth for Jiangzuo at Parrot Island.

The 11th Year (723) of Kaiyuan Period

Cui Hao improvised a poem Inscription on Yellow Crane Tower, which has been lauded as a “tour de force.” Such panegyric even makes it called “the Tower of Cui.”

The 10th Year (636) of Zhenguang Period

The tower’s name first entered into official history. According to The Book of Liang, Xiao Xiu the Prince Anchengkang, Emperor Wudi’s half-brother then Head of Yingzhou Prefecture, “gathered dead soldiers’ bones, paid homage to them and buried them below the tower.” That’s because Xiakou, a battlefield, was littered with such bones. The History of Southern Dynasties, compiled in the 4th Year (659) of Emperor Gaozong’s Xianqing Period, writes a similar record.