Trekking the Great Wall of China
After a long time of consideration I have finally decided to close this blog. I have still not decided to delete the blog completely or just leave it as it is. I had high hopes for the blog in the beginning but it never turned out to be what I had hoped for, and I’m beginning to doubt that this blog is the right way to present my Great Wall experience.
Instead of being a guilty conscience it is better to close the blog completely.
I have given myself the daunting task of sorting all my Great Wall photos. I have a lot of photos, but a very bad habit of saving too many of them. To save harddisk space it is necessary to delete many of the duplicates and out of focus photos – in the future I will do that after each trip, because after two and a half year in China the job of sorting all the pictures is simply overwhelming.
So far I have finished the Great Wall pictures from Beijing and Gansu and some of the pictures can now be seen in the gallery here. Next on the list is Hebei but with more that 16,000 (more than 3,000 from Baiyangyu alone) photos that might take some time, so check again later.
When the job of sorting the pictures is done I will again post descriptions of various Great Wall sections – mainly Hebei province.
Probably the most unique watch tower in the Eastern Hebei area is Shenweilou at the western section of Baiyangyu. Shenweilou (神威楼) meaning invincible might tower is without doubt one of the most unique, beautiful and most interesting of all the varied towers in Hebei province.
A stone tablet above the door show the name of the tower – Shenweilou (神威楼) – and also indicate when the tower was build.
The vertical text in the right side of the tablet reads:
游击将军张世忠题: Guerilla warfare General Zhang Shizhong
The vertical text in the left side of the tablet reads:
万历丙申仲夏吉立: Established in midsummer, Bingshen year of Wanli
Bingshen is the 33rd year of the 60 year cycle in the Chinese calender and Wanli was the emperor between 1572 and 1620. 2016 is the next Bingshen year, so during Wanli’s rule 1596 was the Bingshen year (2016 – 7×60). At this time Qi Jiguang, renowned for repairing the Great Wall, was already dead (1588), so apparently the repair and construction of the wall continued several years after his death.
Who was Zhang Shizhong? It seems not much is known about this General, at least not available in English, so it is difficult to say exactly who he was.
Inside the tower consist of one single room with a barrel-vault top. Each of the three walls that would be facing an approaching enemy (the west, north and east wall) from the north have three embrasures to engage the enemy. One big embrasure in the the middle for shooting arrows and a smaller one at each side for throwing down rocks if the enemy got close to the tower. These holes was also used for dropping thunder stones at the enemy. Thunder stone was a hollow stone filled with gunpowder that could inflict great damaged when exploding. The Chinese name for these holes is 雷石口 (léi shí kǒu) which translate to thunder stone opening. In the outer wall grooves were cut in the wall to make it easier to drop the stones (see the first picture in this post) – to my knowledge this is a feature rarely seen in Eastern Hebei.
Opposite the unusually wide doorway is a screen wall where a stone tablet once was. The stone tablet has disappeared but probably told the story about the construction of the Shenweilou tower, and might also have given more information about General Zhang Shizhong.
Most of the towers along this part of the Great Wall are placed on top of the wall, but the Shenweilou tower is placed on the outside of the wall facing the enemy side.
Another feature of the Shenweilou tower is a stairway on the back of the wall. These stairways are very common along the wall and give easy access for the defenders to the wall.
About 2 kilometres northwest of Huachanyu the remains of another wall can be found. I have no information about this pass at all, but by the look of it, it might be an early Ming dynasty design. Even traces of watch towers can be found along the wall, and close to the pass it split into two sections that forms a double wall around the pass.
An interesting place to visit in Qinhuangdao is Huachangyu, not very far from Weiziyu. The mountains on both side of the pass is very steep and treacherous and does not offer any good hiking terrain.
What makes Huachangyu well worth the trip is the double walled pass. In contains both a early Ming wall with two well preserved stone towers and a late Ming wall build with bricks. The early Ming wall is to the west (left side of the above picture) and the late Ming wall is to the east. The early wall is still in very good condition, so it seems that an additional wall was added later simply to strengthen the defence of the pass.
The two walls are approximately 35 meters apart. The late Ming wall continues up the mountain on the north and south side of the pass, while only a few traces can be found of the early wall except for the pass itself.
The early Ming watch towers are well preserved although some of the corners have been destroyed, but the still make a good impressions of how these early Ming towers were build.
Both two towers had brick crenels added in the later Ming dynasty but seems to be otherwise original.
The wall to the north of the pass is very steep, but the wall to the south can be climbed for about 200 meters before it ends at a steep mountain peak. The wall here is typical late Ming brick wall with nicely decorated holes for throwing stones at an invading enemy.
The brick wall here is fairly well-preserved although some of the brick towers have suffered some damaged.
Before the wall ends at a steep mountain peak it changes from a brick wall to a stone wall. It seems to be very normal, that the wall close to the pass was made by bricks and further away from the pass local stones and rocks were used to construct the wall.
Entrance price: free
Date of visit: April 11, 2009
Along the Great Wall there are dozens of different watch towers, some of them are unique while others can be seen at numerous locations.
So far I have only seen this kind of towers in Liaoning province – in the section between Zhuizishan and Jinniudong.
Inside there is one big room with a corridor all the way around it. In one end of the room a narrow staircase lead to the roof. Below is a sketch of one of these watch towers. Some have three windows in each side, some only two in one side and some also have a window beside the door in the main wall.
This is not like any towers I’ve seen so far in Hebei, so it might be a special Liaoning design.
The blog have been updated to WordPress 2.8 so the old design was no longer working. I will continue to adjust the design in the future. Any suggesting would be highly appriciated.
It seems another section of Badaling is being restored to its former glory:
Cultural heritage authorities have commissioned a team of seven mules to transport bricks and lime to rebuild the Badaling section of the Great Wall, northwest of Beijing.
Chen Zhimin, a farmer of Yezhao village in Chengde city, north Hebei Province, told Xinhua Tuesday that his mule team would carry 420 tonnes of materials in the next 60 days to rebuild a 10-kilometer section of the 600-year-old Great Wall.
News from Xinhua News Agency (link).
The SACH ordered complete restoration to its original appearance.
According to news released today by People’s Daily Online the result of a survey that started in 2006 has reviled the total length of the Ming dynasty Great Wall to be 8851.8 km, which is 2551.8 km more then previous estimates.
The length of the Great Wall include:
6259.6 kilometres artificial wall
359.7 kilometres trenches
2232.5 kilometres of natural defensive barriers (mountains, rivers etc.)
The survey will now focus on the Qin and Han dynasty wall including wall from other dynasties.
For information in Chinese please visit these links:
State Administration of Cultural Heritage
State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping
For more background information please visit these links:
Heritage guardians to start high-tech survey on Great Wall
Length of the Great Wall to be announced in 2008
China’s first regulation protecting the Great Wall goes into effect
China to measure length of Great Wall
Less than 30 percent of Ming Dynasty Great Wall still standing
One-fifth of Ming Dynasty Great Wall in Inner Mongolia has disappeared
According to some books and websites barrier walls is exclusive to the Gubeikou-Jinshanling-Simatai area, however this is not true. At least one place these small walls, perpendicular to the main wall, can be seen in the eastern part of Hebei province namely at Damaoshan north of Qinhuangdao.
On the steep sections of the wall the soldiers would be exposed to enemy weapons, so the the barrier wall was added to give extra protection leaving only a small passage for the soldiers to walk.
Another function would be to protect the soldiers in the event that the enemy gained access to the wall, so the defending soldiers could fight the enemy and stay protected at the same time.
At Damaoshan the barrier walls are only 8-9 bricks high so it seems that the main purpose of these walls was to protect the soldiers from enemy fire once the enemy was close to the wall.
The hight of these walls at Damaoshan would make it difficult for the soldiers to hide behind them and even more difficult to fight the enemy while protected by the walls even though each barrier wall is equipped with one shooting/watch hole.
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