Dr. Mark Nan Tu

LaoLongTou Great Wall

???Shanhaiguan Pass, called ??Yuguan in the past, is in ???Hebei province, about 15 km. from ???Qinhuangdao’s city center. A strategic pass in the northeast since antiquity, its present fortress and Wall were built in the fourteenth year (1381) of the ??Hongwu reign during the ??Ming dynasty (1368-1644) by the great general, ??Xu Da. To its northwest lies the ???Yanshan mountain range, and to its east the ??Bohai sea marks the end of land � thus, comes the name ???Shanhaiguan (Pass between Mountain and Water).

Shanhaiguan has 4 gates, of which the most well-known and the most important is the town’s east gate, called ???Zhendongmen. But because poetics and drama stick to the populace more, this gate has since been known as “???????”(The First Pass Under Heaven Gate Tower) or simply the “?????”(The First Pass Gate Tower). This is due to the huge board hanging on the face of the gate tower with the four large characters “?????” written by the Ming calligrapher ??Xiao Xian. The gate walls are 14 meters high and 7 meters thick, and these surround an inner town with a perimeter of 4 kilometers. The Great Wall connects to The First Pass and runs 26 kilometers across the town and up the western hills, and links the ??? Old Dragon Head to the ??Bohai Sea in the east.

???Laolongtou (Old Dragon Head) is about 4 kilometers south of Shanhaiguan. The “Dragon’s Head” refers to the group of structures that converges on the ??Bohai Sea. The most dramatic is the section that enters the water, called �????�(The Stone Fort Entering the Sea). As I stood on the shore observing its profile, “Old Dragon’s Head” I thought: the ancient mythological beast’s long jaw, knotty forehead and scaled neck reveals itself as it slowly submerges and retires to the sea. After tens of thousands of li � from its desert tail end through mostly barren highllands and wastelands, then descending toward east, winding through its rolling green hills and craggy mountains � its quiet head finally reaches into water and urges for the depth of the sea.

The repaired section of the greatwall just outsie ShanHaiGuan

The ruins of the greatwall

The west gate of ShanHaiGuan

The stores in the ShanHaiGuan township