The Yellow Crane Tower was built in 223 on the Snake Hill in Wuchang, Hubei Province. It
was named so as a legend said that an immortal ascending to heaven on the back of a yellow
crane had passed the place and may poems had since been written about it. One of the
best-known poems reads as follows:
Once an immortal passed on his yellow crane’s back;
The deserted Yellow Crane Tower was left there.
The yellow crane was gone and will never come back;
Only eternal white clouds still float in the air.
The tower was famous for the views it commanded over the Yangtze River and its tributaries
flowing from the west to the east, over the Beijing-Guangzhou railway extending from the
north to the south, over the two hills, one like a tortoise protruding from the northern
bank, and the other like a snake uncoiling on the southern bank, both seeming to hold
tight the great Yangtze River.
This poem was written in the spring of 1927 when Mao Zedong, after making an investigation
on the peasant movement in Hunan Province, came to Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province,
to attend a joint meeting of representives of peasants of various provinces. The right
opportunists in the Communist Party dared not support the great revolutionary struggle of
the peasants, preferred to desert the peasantry and thus left the working class and the
Communist Party isolated and without help. As a result, the Kuomintang murdered leaders
of the workers, suppressed peasants and made war on the people in the summer of 1927.
Then Mao Zedong left Wuhan to organize the famous Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan
province.