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
2 Responses to “Banchangyu”
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Congratulations on this post! It’s very interesting and your photos are superb. It looks like a great place? Did you like this place better than Baiyangyu? Would you say this is your favorite Great Wall location so far?
Thanks Bryan, Banchangyu is truly a great place, but it is difficult to compare it to Baiyangyu. The beauty of Banchangyu together with its difficulty surely makes it one of my favourite places and it’s up there close to Baiyangyu. I’m not happy to downgrade Baiyangyu, but maybe Banchangyu is my new favourite place. I will probably visit Baiyangyu again within a few weeks because my wife has never been there and she always here me talk about it.
Actually I’m thinking about a way to grade the different places I’ve been to, so maybe that will come on the blog soon.