Watchtowers are a pair of symmetrical buildings built in front of a city gate, a palace, an ancestral temple, or a mausoleum. Between the two watchtowers is a space serving as a path. As watchtowers can serve as symbolic gates, they are also called “gate towers”.

The three stone watchtowers from the Eastern Han dynasty, namely, the Taishi Watchtower, the Shaoshi Watchtower, and the Qimu Watchtower, at the foot of Mount Songshan in Dengfeng, are watchtowers in front of an ancestral temple, are the only three temple watchtowers surviving, and correspond to Mount Taishi, Mount Shaoshi and the Qimu Stone, to which the Han dynasty offered sacrifices due to their association with the imperial family of the Xia dynasty, which also explains why the stone reliefs on the three watchtower depict stories about and things associated with the Han and Xia dynasties.