In 1876, a local official named Yang Zhaorui returned to Lijiang with a delicate, hand-woven bamboo model of a pavilion he had admired at Hangzhou's West Lake. He hired local carpenters to translate this lightweight frame into a grand three-tiered wooden tower at the foot of Elephant Hill. They erected the structure in the center of Black Dragon Pool, anchoring it to an octagonal stone base rising four meters above the spring-fed water. They named it Deyue, meaning "obtaining the moon," inspired by the classic idea that the pavilion closest to the water catches the moon's reflection first.

For eighty-five years, the tower framed the snowy peaks of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Then, in the winter of 1961, a sudden fire reduced the wooden pavilion to ash and the bitter smell of charred timber.

The community quickly resolved to rebuild. The sharp ring of their chisels shaped a new twenty-meter-tall tower, matching the original three-bay width and depth. On the upper floors, they carved Ruyi bracket sets, while at the ground level, they placed outer eave-supporting columns at the four corners. These columns carry the heavy corner beams, lifting the eaves into dramatic, winged curves that slice the mountain air.

During the rebuild, Zhou Rucheng, the director of the local cultural center, wrote to the scholar Guo Moruo in Beijing to request calligraphy. Though Guo never visited Lijiang, he sent back ink-brushed characters for the name plaque and composed poetic couplets. One couplet describes the thirteen peaks of the snow mountain reflecting in the pool, comparing the water's deep green depths to black and green jade.

Today, the tower stands as a national monument within the UNESCO buffer zone of the Old Town of Lijiang. Visitors cross the stone bridge to stand where the cool lake breeze meets the heavy timber columns. The structure remains a physical record of human hands—from the nineteenth-century bamboo model to the mid-twentieth-century chisels of local masons—all aligned to capture the mountain and the moon in a single sheet of water.