The Great Wall in Hebei and especially the Beijing area have been well described and documented, however not much information regarding the Great Wall in Liaoning province is available. Some books show an inaccurate map but many still show the Great Wall to end at Shanhaiguan in Hebei, and the same goes for most map – even maps of Liaoning seldom shows the wall or only a few kilometres close to Shanghaiguan.

Living in the city of Tangshan (Hebei province) I only have a two hours drive to the Hebei/Liaoning border, so it’s my goal in the next few years to further explore the Liaoning Great Wall. Much of it has long disappeared because the stones and brick have been used in other constructions or because the quality of the wall simply didn’t allow it to survive for hundreds of years.

Last weekend I started my quest to explore the Great Wall in Liaoning going to an area northeast of the old fortified city of Qiansuo and located in the shadow of Mount Sanshan.

The first people we asked how to get to the wall told us to go to Jiumenkou 20 kilometres away, even though if they had turned their head they would have seen the Great Wall a few hundreds meters away. Others did know about the Great Wall and showed us to a path leading to the wall. Unfortunately, the area was covered with cornfields making it very difficult to locate any path and finding the right path was even more difficult. When the weather deteriorated, I decided to come back another time when the crops have been harvested and the path should be more clearly visible.

There seems to be a watchtower just south of the wall, east of the road, however this might also be related to the monastery located on the opposite side of the road. The monastery have been rebuild since the Google Earth images was taken, and large parts of the wall seems to have disappeared since then or maybe just concealed by the crops.

Although it has been known for some years that the eastern end of the Great Wall is located at the Hushan mountain in the eastern part of Liaoning province, close to the boarder of North-Korea, many still believe that Shanhaiguan is the eastern end of the Great Wall, and the information about the Great Wall in Liaoning is very sparse, mainly because large part of the wall in this area is long gone. Now most books only mention (if mentioned at all) Hushan, Jiumenkou and a few also mention Xigou.

During a trip to the old city of Xingcheng, located in Huludao prefecture-level city, 100 kilometres northeast of Shanhaiguan, I came across an interesting map showing the Great Wall within Xingcheng city.

I went to see the White Pagoda at Baitayu 14 kilometres outside Xingcheng, and according to a local guide book some rubbles from the long gone Great Wall in this area should be visible close to the pagoda, however I didn’t find any trace of the wall and none of the locals we asked knew anything about the Great Wall in this area.