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When the Chinese people speak of a Lou, they refer to tower  which is any building of two or more storeys with a horizontal main ridge. The erection of such buildings began a long time ago in the Period of the Warring States (475-221 BC), when Chonglou ("layered houses") was mentioned in historical records.

Yueyang Tower, also called Yueyang Pavilion, is standing at the western gate of Yueyang Ancient City, Hunan Province, overlooking Lake Dongting from its perch on the eastern shore of the lake. And it is the central attraction in Yueyang City, given its cultural history and its fame as one of the three famous towers of Southern China, the other two being Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan, Hubei Province and Prince Teng Pavilion in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. 

Ancient buildings with more than one storey were meant for a variety of uses. The smaller two-storeyed buildings of private homes generally have the owner's study or bedroom upstairs. The more magnificent ones built in parks or at scenic spots were belvederes from which to enjoy the distant scenery. In this case, it is sometimes translated as a "tower". A Tang Dynasty poet upon his visit to a famous riverside tower composed a poem, two lines of which are still frequently quoted "To look far into the distance, go up yet one more storey".

Ancient cities had bell and drum towers (zhonglou and gulou), usually palatial buildings with four-sloped, double-caved, glazed roofs, all-around verandas and coloured and carved dougong brackets supporting the overhanging eaves. They housed a big bell or drum which was used to toll hours and the local officials would open the city gates at the toll of the bell early in the morning and close them with the strike of the drum in the evening.

The art of constructing tall buildings was already highly developed in China during ancient times. Many multiple-storeyed towers of complex structure had wholly wood frameworks fixed together with dougong brackets without the use of a single piece of metal. Yueyang Tower in Hunan and Huanghelou (Tower of the Yellow Crane) in Wuchang are masterpieces among ancient towers.