In the weekend I went back to The Baiyangyu Great Wall located in the north-western part of the Tangshan area in Hebei province. It was the third time I visited this section but first time for my wife – she have heard me praise this section many times so she wanted to see if it’s really so great.

We choose the easy way up to avoid the steep mountain in order to have more time on the Great Wall. However for first time visitors of Baiyangyu it is recommended to hike from the small town of Baiyangyu to see the magnificent view from the top of the mountain and try to climb the steep wall at this point.

From the top of the wall there is a beautiful view of the valley to the south and in the mountains to the north the Great Wall can be seen winding its way over the mountaintops like a giant dragon.

Baiyangyu is also known as the Marble Great Wall because of the use of natural occurring white rocks to build part of the Great Wall in this area. After entering the wall it’s about 2 kilometres hike to the beginning of the Marble Great Wall.

Some places the wall is in really bad condition and part of the wall have collapse leaving only part of the wall intact. Especially the Marble Great Wall is in bad condition because of the lower quality of the wall owing to the building material.

Close to the Marble Great Wall several bricks bearing the mark 中 (zhong, meaning middle) can be found. Similar bricks can be seen at Liujiakou not so far away.

The markings refer to the production of the bricks and several other examples can be found on other sections of the Great Wall.

The first two times I visited Baiyangyu I didn’t continue at the steep mountain at the Marble section, but this time I wanted to go to the top. Seen from the road the mountain looks steep, but the main problem is the rocky surface that makes it difficult to climb and even more difficult to descent.

Because of the difficulty of the climb the mountain is not recommend for beginners or people with less experience. Once at the top the view is magnificent and the wall can be seen winding is way to east and west.

On the west side the Marble Great Wall continues for a few kilometres before it again resume its normal stone/brick configuration. The wall seems to be in fairly good condition here and can be accessed by road by continuing from Baiyangyu village. I hope to be able to go back to Baiyangyu one day to make an attempt to climb to the top of this part of the wall. It looks rather steep in the beginning, but once at the top is seems to be fairly level.

The top of the mountain houses a small watch tower not similar to the other watch towers seen at Baiyangyu. However only half remains of some of the watch towers so it’s difficult to see how big these originally were.

To get to Baiyangyu take the Jingshen (Beijing-Shenyang) express way and exit towards Qian’an (迁安) and then follow S252 towards Qinglong (青龙). At Jianchangyingzhen (建昌营镇) continue on the road for a short time and then follow the sign towards Baiyangyu (白羊峪). It’s possible to enter the the wall two places, either at a small site after the first mountain (clearly visible with a traditional Chinese gate at the roadside) or it’s possible to follow the road all the way to the Baiyangyu village and enter the wall from here.

Entrance price: 20 RMB

Date of visit: April 27, 2008

People’s Daily Online reported on April 22, that several new sections of the Great Wall have been discovered in Gansu Province after a survey of the Gansu Great Wall began in 2007. The Great Wall in these newly discovered sections were built during the Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC), Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.) and Ming Dynasty (1368 A.D. – 1644 A.D.).

In 2007, a team surveyed nearly 1,000 kilometers of Gansu Province; and discovered three segments of wall and moats, and six barriers and four beacon towers in Tianzhu County, Liangzhou District and Jinta County. These sites, found in the wild and previously not documented, were named after their locations.

Gansu Province’s Great Wall sites include the work of five dynasties, with a total length of 4,000 kilometers of wall. Moreover, heads of the Great Wall, built during the Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, are located in Gansu .

Inspired by my recent trip to the Banchangyu Great Wall I designed a Save the Great Wall logo as can be seen in the sidebar. I’m not quite sure how to use it yet, and maybe it will just stay at my own blog as a quiet protest.

A bigger version of the logo can be found here.

Yesterday I visited the Banchangyu Great Wall section in the Qinhuangdao area in the eastern Hebei province. Banchangyu is located approximately 40 kilometres north of Qinhuangdao. From Qinhuangdao follow S251 towards Qinglong until Yiyuankou. From Yiyuankou a small mountain road leads north towards the Banchangyu scenic area.

I have not been able to find much information regarding this section of the Great Wall. However according to the leaflet we received at the ticket office the area both contains an early Ming wall and a late Ming wall. The two sections can be seen on the below picture from Google Earth, the blue being the early wall and the red the late wall:

The early wall is made of stone and can be seen on the way trough the scenic area which also contains various temples and natural sights. The late Ming wall is lined with the well known gray bricks. Apparently the wall in this area was first constructed in 1381 and later renovated and expanded in 1571, so it seems that when renovating the wall a new wall was build to the north of the old wall in the steep mountains and the old wall was left as it were.

A good place to stop is the big restaurant in the middle of the scenic area. From here it’s a steep climb towards the Great Wall, but the wall in this area is truly worth the effort.

The wall in this area fully exploit the natural defence provided by the steep mountains, making it very difficult for the enemy to intrude.

At some places the wall is almost vertical.

From the top it’s possible to see the wall wind its way south towards Yiyuankou which looks like a very interesting trek, so I hope to be able to go back to this area one day.

According to one of the locals the local government have some plans to restore the wall at Banchangyu. I really hope they don’t succeed with their plans and make a new Badaling.

The Wall is already in fairly good condition so it would be sad to see it restored. Apparently they don’t like that the wall don’t have any inside parapet, however I didn’t see any evidence that there ever being an inside parapet.

Close Banchangyu some brick kilns have been found. For more info about that please see here and here.

Entrance price: 30 RMB

Date of visit: April 19, 2008

Last year the Beijing Forestry Bureau suggested that the daily maximum number of visitors at some tourist attractions in northwestern Beijing should be restricted to 53,300. Annually the figure should be kept within 16 million. This area include the Badaling section of the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. The plan, even after central government approval, will only serve as a long-term objective rather than a binding document.

I don’t think Badaling or the Ming Tombs would be forced to limit the daily number of visitors anytime soon, but we do hope more tourists could be diverted to less-crowded destinations to better protect the ancient structures and ensure tourist safety. (Xinhua)

Badaling alone received an average of 62,000 visitors daily during this lart year’s May “golden week”, according to figures provided by the Badaling management office shortly after the holiday.

The World Bank have approved a loan of $38.4 million to a sustainable tourism project in the Gansu province.

The loan to the People’s Republic of China will be used to generate benefits for local communities through the development of a sustainable cultural tourism sector in Gansu Province in north-western China. Home to 26 million people, the province is regarded as one of the poorest in the country, measured by per capita GDP. With such cultural and natural heritage assets as the Silk Road, the Great Wall and the Yellow River, the Gansu Provincial Government regards the development of a sustainable tourism industry as key to its future. Currently, the sector contributes only 3 percent of the province’s GDP.

The project will focus on the conservation of cultural and natural assets and the development of priority infrastructure at nine key sites within the province. These include a portion of the Great Wall, courtyard houses in Qingcheng (thought to be the oldest town on the Yellow River), striking geological parks, and the vast complex of grottoes, temples, murals and statues of Maijishan, in the eastern part of Gansu along the Silk Road. (The World Bank)

According to People’s Daily Online part of the Shanhaiguan Pass in the eastern part of Hebei will restored before the Olympic later this year.

Authentic scenes from the Ming and Qing Dynasties will be restored before the Olympic Games. A commercial street, built in the style of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with a main building modeled after a Si He Yuan (a quadrangular courtyard), will be a reproduction of Ming and Qing humanity and commercial civilization.

The route of the Olympic torch on August 2 of this year into Qinhuangdao has been officially confirmed. The torch will enter the city at Laolongtou – the eastern starting point of the Great Wall – and the torch will pass through Shanhai Pass district, the harbour district and then arrive at the Olympic Avenue Park located in Beidaihe district. (People’s Daily Online)

Qinhuangdao will host some of the preliminary football matches.

One can only hope that Shanhaiguan will be restored according to the original design avoiding some of the errors seen elsewhere.

According to China News the Xinjiang Cultural Relics Bureau informed on March 19 that a total of 40 sites of the Great Wall in the Xinjiang province have been added to its protection list.

The Great Wall in Xinjian was once an important part of the Silk Road. The Great Wall in the Xinjiang province was constructed during 2000 years from the Han dynasty to the Qing dynasty and still about 600 sites are preserved in varying degree of decay including beacon towers, forts and mountain pass.

Xinjiang is part of a Great Wall investigation started last year by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping which include 13 provinces and regions.

Two different sections have been chosen as a basis for the future work.

Olivia Newton-John and her team of celebrities and everyday cancer survivors started their Great Walk to Beijing yesterday. The walk is 228 kilometres on the Great Wall and will take them to different parts of China to raise funds for the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre Appeal.

You can follow the  Great Walk to Beijing here.

The most famous pass along the Great Wall at the border between the Hebei and Shanxi province is the Niangziguan. Niangziguan can be translated to something like Women’s Pass, and according to the legend Emperor Li Yuan of the Tang dynasty put his daughter in charge of guarding the pass together with other female soldiers.

The pass that can be seen today dates from the Ming dynasty and was constructed in 1542 but the original pass dates back to the 7th century. Since then much of the original Wall have crumbled away although the pass itself remains more or less intact and the local government initiated a plan to renovate the area in 2001.

The gate tower is now converted into a small temple and is a sad reminder of how ancient structures should not be repaired. A 1980 photo in The Great Wall Revisited by William Lindesay shows that the gate was original build by stones but after the rebuilding it’s constructed by bricks. Furthermore the watchtower above the gate has been changed from a single-storey to a multi-storey building with flying eaves.

The wall itself looks more like something you would find in an amusement park, and is by far the poorest reconstruction I have ever seen. It simply doesn’t feel right to walk here. At least at Badaling you have a feeling that the wall is reconstructed according to the original design but this feeling is completely absent at Niangziguan.

Unfortunately the amount of heavy loaded trucks in this part of China is beyond belief so I didn’t have time to search for the remains of the original wall which should be located beyond the mountain at the end of the restored section.

I my opinion the Guguan pass not far from here is a much better choice for Great Wall enthusiasts visiting the Shanxi-Hebei border area.

Entrance price: 10 RMB

Date of visit: March 23, 2008