Take a train to Heze, then board Tourist Bus No.15 at the railway station to reach the site.

Chen Platform lies to the southwest of Xinghuagang Village in Jiucheng Town, Juancheng County, Heze City, Shandong Province. It was built by Cao Zhi during his tenure as Prince of Juancheng. Cao Zhi often came here to read books and compose poems and fu, hence its original name "Reading Platform". Later, Cao Zhi was enfeoffed as Prince of Chen and posthumously titled "Si" (Thoughtful). Therefore, the platform is also known as "Prince Si of Chen’s Reading Platform", shortened to "Chen Platform".

Cao Zhi, courtesy name Zijian, was the son of Cao Cao, a statesman and strategist at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Gifted and brilliant from childhood, he possessed extraordinary literary talent. Falling out with his elder brother Cao Pi, he was exiled from the imperial capital under the pretext of being enfeoffed. In the second year of the Huangchu reign of the Wei Dynasty (221 AD), Cao Zhi was conferred the title Marquis of Juancheng, and promoted to Prince of Juancheng the following year. Denied important official appointments, he sank into deep melancholy and distress. After arriving in Juancheng, he constructed the Reading Platform to pass his days reading, writing poems and drinking wine.

Cao Zhi resided in Juancheng for two years. On his way back to the capital after an audience with the emperor, he passed the Luo River and composed his renowned Rhapsody on the Luo River Goddess. The platform once featured more than ten stone steps, with a reading hall, a book storage chamber and a literary gathering pavilion on top. A covered corridor linked his princely mansion to the platform. The Juancheng area sits within the Yellow River floodplain. Repeated Yellow River breaches gradually buried the Reading Platform under silt. Thanks to Cao Zhi’s far-reaching influence, the relic was reinforced and restored many times after successive damages, yet its original grandeur could never be fully recovered.

Poems written by officials and literati across dynasties prove that this ancient site survived for a very long time. In the 1940s, its earthen foundation still stood several feet above the ground, littered with broken bricks and tiles. Though Chen Platform has now been levelled flat, its ruins are still identifiable, drawing visitors year-round to trace its history and pay homage to Cao Zhi.