Baiyu Mountain 白玉山

About Baiyu Mountain

Baiyu Mountain (白玉山) is a 130-metre hill in the middle of the town of Lüshunkou (旅顺口), Dalian (大连), and the site of a memorial tower that the Japanese army built after the Russo-Japanese War.

The hill was once called Xiguan Shan (西官山). In the late Qing, during the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Beiyang Fleet (北洋海军) built its base, Lüshun Port (旅顺港), in the bay below. One story dates the present name to 1880, when Li Hongzhang (李鸿章) climbed the hill with Prince Chun (醇亲王), father of the Guangxu Emperor. Told that the hill opposite was Huangjin Shan (黄金山), 'Gold Hill', Li replied that a hill of gold ought to have a partner of white jade (baiyu), and the hill took that name. Another account puts the name down to rock as white as jade.

The tower was begun in June 1907 on the initiative of Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō (东乡平八郎) and General Nogi Maresuke (乃木希典), in memory of 22,723 Japanese soldiers killed in the war, and finished in November 1909 under the name Biaozhong Ta (表忠塔), 'Tower of Loyalty'. Chinese labourers were conscripted to build it. Stone raised from the ships Japan scuttled to block the channel went into the base, and the facing stone came from Kurokami Island in Nogi's home prefecture of Yamaguchi. The tower rises 66.8 metres to a top shaped like an artillery shell, and an iron spiral staircase of 273 steps runs up inside. The Japanese also built an ossuary for the soldiers' ashes on the hill's north peak, a spot now below the ship's bridge of the Lüshun Naval Weapons Museum (旅顺海军兵器馆).

After Soviet troops took Lüshun in 1945 they removed the tower's name and its bronze inscription, calling it the Baiyu Tower, and the rising-sun pattern of the railing on the tower top was recast in cement as a five-pointed star. It became a Dalian city-level protected cultural relic in 1985 and was formally renamed Baiyushan Tower (白玉山塔) on 16 April 1986; in 1995 the hill was named a Dalian patriotic education base. The Lüshunkou District government points visitors to the summit for the view over Lüshun naval harbour and the whole Laohuwei Peninsula (老虎尾半岛).

What to look for

• Baiyushan Tower (白玉山塔), the 66.8-metre shell-topped tower completed by the Japanese army in 1909
• The 273-step iron spiral staircase inside the tower
• The railing on the tower top, its rising-sun pattern recast in cement as a five-pointed star after 1945
• The view over Lüshun naval harbour and the Laohuwei Peninsula
• Huangjin Shan (黄金山), the hill opposite, the 'Gold Hill' behind the naming story
• The Lüshun Naval Weapons Museum on the north peak, above the site of the Japanese ossuary

Location & getting there

Getting to Baiyu Mountain

• Search for 白玉山 with 大连市 and 旅顺口区.