A provincial prince's home in Zhongxiang, Hubei, was rebuilt to match the scale and defenses of the imperial palaces in Beijing and Nanjing. In 1491, Prince Zhu Youyuan rejected a flood-prone site, choosing the city center to build his home. Decades later, his fourteen-year-old son, Zhu Houcong, left this mansion to claim the imperial throne, famously refusing to enter Beijing as a mere adoptive heir.

Upon becoming the Jiajing Emperor, he spent 897,700 taels of silver to transform his childhood home. He ordered twenty thousand workers to expand the Eastern Heir Residence in 1540. They replaced ordinary roofs with yellow glazed tiles, built the seven-bay Longfei Hall on white marble pedestals, and installed gilded copper fittings. Today, the brick-and-wood Fengxiang Palace still stands, measuring 22.4 meters wide. Before it lies a circular lotus pond where water drains through six stone-carved dragon heads, crossed by a single-arch stone bridge.

Though war destroyed most of the complex, leaving only the rear gate's stone frame and two dragon-carved steps, the site transitioned into a quiet prefectural school during the Qianlong era. Today, next to a local middle school, the stone dragons still watch the water flow, linking a teenager's stubborn ambition to the quiet passage of modern student life.