Changshou Ancient Town, the hill above it and the lake below

Changshou Putuo Ancient Town, also called Changshou Ancient Town, is a scenic area set up on the basis of Putuo Temple at the foot of Putuo Mountain, about 78 kilometres from downtown Chongqing. In April 2014 it was approved as a national 4A tourist area. The plan covers 2,000 mu in all with an 800 mu core zone, 1.3 million square metres of floor area and an investment of 4.3 billion yuan, built to national 5A standards as the central part of the Putuo Mountain scenic area. Its named features are a humanistic avenue, two water systems, Wanshou Square, Wanshou Park, an old theatre, a temple-fair square, a city-god temple, a Confucian temple and a city gate tower.

Below the town the river is held by a dam on the southern edge of the water: 1,014 metres long, 98 metres wide at the base, 52 metres high and 8 metres across the top. The lake it makes has a surface of 65.5 square kilometres with more than two hundred islands in it, and an English account of the district gives the man-made lake as 60 square kilometres. At the plaza by the dam stands a stele carrying the inscriptions left by Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian and Li Fuchun when they inspected the Shizitan dam in 1958. The Longxi rises in Liangping and falls in steps below the works.

The district around the lake is a Yangtze county with a recorded span of 2,300 years: a Zhi county in 316 BC, Jiangzhou in 226 AD, Lewen in 519, Changshou county from 1362, and a Chongqing district from 2002. It stands 80 kilometres from the Yuzhong district of downtown Chongqing and is crossed by two Yangtze bridges, one road and one railway. Its subdistricts run from Fengcheng at the old seat through Yanjia and Jiangnan to Duzhou and Putuo. A cable car crosses the river here, and the river is still the first fact about the place.