On the western shore of Erhai Lake, in Longfeng Village, a stone foundation sits in the shadow of the Ershui Divine Temple. This quiet ruin is all that remains of the Haoran Pavilion, once celebrated as the preeminent of the four famous pavilions of Erhai. For centuries, this spot served as a stage where human ambition met the shifting moods of water and wind.

The story began in the early Tang Dynasty with a simple structure called the Linshui Pavilion, which inspired the poet Luqiu Jun to write of its green grasses and distant islands. In 1528, the military official Jiang Long initiated a grander timber-frame construction to mark a successful prayer for rain. At its inauguration, the exiled Ming scholar Yang Shen and the local writer Li Yuanyang stood on the elevated stone platform. They watched fishing boats mingle with egrets while drinking wine. Li Yuanyang recorded the scene, capturing the sensation of cold lake spray and green mountain mist.

Over the centuries, the pavilion underwent a cycle of destruction and rebirth. In 1806, a local villager named Yang Xun built a new platform to support the structure, renaming it the Ancient Linshui Pavilion. Mid-nineteenth-century warfare reduced it to ashes. By 1899, local officials rebuilt it to celebrate a bumper harvest, renaming it the Fengle Pavilion. The calligrapher Li Ruiqing brushed its new nameplate with thick, black ink.

Nature intervened again. The massive 1925 Dali earthquake leveled the timber frame. Local residents and county magistrates raised it once more in 1929 and restored it in 1943. The final structure stood until 1984, when it vanished from the shoreline.

Today, visitors to the Ershui Divine Temple can still find the stone steles that survived the pavilion's falls. The 1817 Erhai Xing stele, carved with the poetry of Song Xiang, remains preserved nearby. The Bai scholar Zhao Fan later composed a famous couplet, advising travelers to search the ruins to supplement the stone steles. The physical timber has rotted. The stone foundations still face the nineteen peaks of Cangshan, holding the memory of those who stood here to watch the storm clouds break.