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Yanmenguan. Yanmenguan was one of the three outer passes of the Ming Great Wall. It is located 20 kilometers to the northwest of Dai County, Shānxi Province. The place is in the transversal range of the Taihang Range, called ‘the Juzhu Mountain’ or ‘the Yanmen Mountain’ in ancient times. From the Spring and Autumn Period to the Tang Dynasty Yanmenguan was called ‘the Juzhu Pass’, holding the first place of ‘the Nine Most Important Passes under Heavens’. It was first built in the Tang Dynasty, and began to be named after the mountain. In the Tang Dynasty its role was to hold back Tujue from attacking southward. In the Song Dynasty it was mainly for against Qidan. After the Ming Dynasty having overthrown the Yuan Regime, its military importance was enhanced with the conflicts between the Ming Regime and the Mongolian nobles. In 1374 Ji’an Hou Lu Xiang shifted the former site of Yanmenguan several li northward to today’s seat.
The perimeter of Yanmenguan is about 1 kilometer. The rampart is over 6 meters high, built with bricks outside and rammed loess inside with a slab foundation. The pass has three city gates— the eastern gate, western gate and the small northern gate. The small northern gate has been destroyed, and the other two are still left on the top of which stone tablets ‘Natural Barrier’ and ‘Favorable Location’ were inlaid respectively, denoting the strategic importance of the pass. On the pass gates there were built gate towers that were all destroyed during the Anti-Japanese War. On the top of the former small northern gate there was a stone tablet with an intaglio inscription in regular script ‘Yanmenguan’. On its both sides there were carved out a couplets on the inlaid bricks ‘The most crucial one of the three outer passes; the most important one of the nine passes under Heavens’. The couplets were destroyed with the pass gate long ago.
From the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, Yanmenguan was regarded as a most important strategic place. In the Chinese history, Xiongnu, Tujue, Huige, Xianbei, Qidan, Nüzhen, Mongols and other minority tribes had fought with defenders of the Central Plains along the Yanmenguan Great Wall. A senior Song general Yang Ye was Ci Shi of Daizhou in 980. During his station in Yanmenguan, 100 thousand Liao troops came to attack. At the time Yang Ye had less than 10 thousand troops. In this situation, Yang decidedly made an ingenious move, commanding his troops to the northern gate and attacking the enemy in the south. Unknowing number of Song soldiers and being afraid of ambush around Yanmenguan, the enemy fled in a hurry.
