The Stork Tower (Guanque Lou) at Hongtong, northeast of Linfen, is one of the most celebrated sites in Chinese classical poetry. Wang Zhihuan's eight-line poem written from the tower's upper storey — ending with the observation that to see another thousand li you must climb one more storey — has been memorised by Chinese schoolchildren for over a thousand years. The original Tang-dynasty tower was destroyed and the current structure is a 1997 reconstruction, but it is a careful one, and the view from the upper level over the Yellow River plain to the west gives the poem its meaning back.
The tower is taller and more dramatically sited than the rebuilt version you might expect from a tourist reconstruction — the designers took the poetry seriously and built accordingly. The riverside landscape below, with the Fen joining the Yellow River, gives a sense of the panoramic scale that inspired the original poem. The town of Hongtong itself is notable for the Dahuaishu (Great Sophora Tree) immigration memorial, commemorating the mass population movements of the early Ming period.