please choose your country
http://www.jygcc.com.cn/english/web/index.htm
Jiayuguan. Jiayuguan was the west end of the Ming Great Wall. It is located in the west part of Jiayuguan city, Gansu Province. It clutched the gorge of the Hexi Corridor and had great strategic importance. It was a must pass of the ancient Silk Road. As early as the Han Dynasty there was the Great Wall built there, but as an independent pass its history is not very long. In 1372 after General Feng Sheng of the Ming Dynasty conquered Hexi, he believed that Jiayuguan was surrounded by mountains and rivers that were most suitable for the construction of a pass. Therefore, he made a suggestion to the Court to choose Jiayuguan to be the site for the construction of the Great Wall instead of Dunhuang.
Jiayuguan has an inner city and an outer city. Inner city is in the center of the pass. The cross section of the pass city is nearly a trapezoid with the west side bigger than the east side. In perimeter of the inner city is 640 meters, and takes up 25 thousand square meters. Ramparts of the eastern, western, southern and northern side are 154, 166, 160 and 160 meters long respectively with the height of 9 meters. During over 160 years from 1372 to 1538, with constant construction, Jiayuguan gradually became a real impregnable pass. Before that there was hardly any defense works around the pass city. Between the Wenshu Mountain and the Hei Mountain there was only a lone pass city for defense. From 1539 the Ming Regime began the construction of the Great Wall from the top of the cliffs on the north bank of the Taolai River at the foot of the Wenshu Mountain in the south, via the pass city to the cliffs of the Hei Mountain in the north, which enabled Jiayuguan to become a complete and important strategic pass. Outside the western urn city there was built net cities to which earth walls of the south, north and east sides were connected, and thus the outer city of Jiayuguan took shape with the perimeter of 1263 meters.
Inside Jiayuguan there are more than ten defensive buildings including battlements, watch towers, angle turrets, garrets and lock gate buildings. Upon the eastern and western city gates there were built ‘the Guanghua Building’ and ‘the Rouyuan Building’ in 1506. The two buildings are 17 meters high. They have the triple-layered wooden structure, the single layered saddle roof and a winding corridor around. The western net city gate faces the west and is the main entrance of the pass city, upon which there is a stone table with big characters ‘Jiayuguan’. In 1495 the Jiayuguan city tower was built upon the net city, which is of the same structure and in the same middle line with the eastern and western gate towers. In the last years of the Tong Zhi Period of the Qing Dynasty, the famous general and senior officer Zuo Zongtang who stationed in Suzhou at the time had had the rampart and city tower repaired, and inscribed the tablet ‘the First Impregnable Pass under Heavens’.
