In 1616, the Naxi chieftain Mu Zeng looked out from a newly completed timber gatehouse at the edge of his family's garden in Lijiang. He named it Guangbi Tower, later publishing a collection of poems under its title. Built with a post-and-lintel system and a double-eave hip-and-gable roof, the structure stood on the central axis of the Mu Palace. Its eight upturned wing corners pointed toward the Yunnan sky. On the second floor, builders interlocked three-tier, six-share bracket sets without nails, forming a recessed, box-shaped caisson ceiling that distributed the heavy weight of the roof.

For over two centuries, the tower served as a threshold to leisure and literature. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, local authorities converted the gatehouse into an imperial library. This literary purpose shielded the building during the mid-nineteenth century, when rebellions reduced the surrounding palace to ash. Guangbi Tower survived.

The twentieth century brought different occupants. The building became a high school classroom, a public education hall, and eventually government offices. Decades of administrative use took a toll on the ancient timber. In 1982, to protect the original Ming Dynasty woodwork, preservationists dismantled the tower piece by piece and moved it to the quiet southwestern foot of Elephant Mountain in Black Dragon Pool Park. This original structure houses rare, UNESCO-registered Dongba manuscripts, continuing its legacy as a sanctuary for written words.

Visitors to the rebuilt Mu Palace walk through this replica to enter the rear gardens, while those who seek the original seventeenth-century timbers find them resting by the mountain pool, still held together by the precise joinery of Ming Dynasty carpenters.