In 1046, the statesman Fan Zhongyan wrote The Yueyang Tower (岳阳楼记). Near its end, it describes the ideal of the virtuous men of old: to be “the first to worry about the worries of the world, and the last to enjoy its pleasures” (先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐).
According to a 2019 report, the essay is a must for school exams, and visitors who could recite it in full were admitted to the tower for free.