Jiayuguan City 嘉峪关市

Setting and landscape

Jiuquan (酒泉) surrounds the city on three sides, and Zhangye (张掖) borders it to the south. The Qilian Mountains rise above 2,000 m in the southwest, the Heishan (黑山) hills stand to the northwest and Wenshu Mountain (文殊山) to the south; between them lies a flat gravel Gobi with little vegetation and a few oases, crossed in the southeast by the Taolai River (讨赖河). Jiayuguan is one of four prefecture-level cities in China with no districts.

History

Cultural remains about 5,000 years old have been found on cliffs in the Heishan gorge. After Emperor Wu's Hexi campaign of 121 BC the area came under the Western Han as part of Jiuquan Commandery. The Ming general Feng Sheng (冯胜) built the pass in 1372; its inner gate towers followed in 1506, and in 1539 wings of wall were added north and south under Li Han (李涵), military intendant of Suzhou (肃州). The area long belonged to Jiuquan County; a county-level Jiayuguan city was created in 1965 and raised to prefecture level in 1971.

What to see

The pass fort faces west and combines an outer wall, an inner fort, barbicans, an outer enclosure and a moat. Its inner fort has rammed-loess walls 10.7 m high and 640 m around, with the Guanghua and Rouyuan gates (光化门, 柔远门) to east and west. It is part of the Great Wall World Heritage site, inscribed in 1987. The Gansu culture and tourism department treats the fort and two outworks of 1539 as one defensive system. The Overhanging Great Wall (悬壁长城) climbs both ridges of the Shiguan Gorge (石关峡) 8.4 km north of the fort, and the First Beacon Tower (长城第一墩), which the department calls the Ming wall's westernmost beacon, stands on a cliff about 56 m above the Taolai River 7.5 km to the south. The department also calls the Jiayuguan Great Wall Museum (嘉峪关长城博物馆) China's first museum devoted to the Wall.

At Xincheng (新城), 18 km northeast of the city, more than 1,400 Wei and Jin tombs lie on the Gobi. Excavations since 1972 have yielded more than 760 painted bricks showing farming, mulberry picking, hunting, postal relays and journeys, and the Xincheng–Guoyuan tomb group has been a national key cultural relic since 2001.

Getting oriented

Jiayuguan lies 750 km from Lanzhou. The Lanzhou–Xinjiang railway reached it in 1956, the high-speed line opened in 2014 stops at Jiayuguan South, and its airport is Jiayuguan Jiuquan Airport.

Highlights

• Jiayuguan Pass 嘉峪关关城: Built in 1372; a national key cultural relic in the first list of 1961 and part of the Great Wall World Heritage site since 1987.
• Overhanging Great Wall 悬壁长城: Named for walls that seem to hang from the ridges on both sides of the Shiguan Gorge; nicknamed the 'Badaling of the west'.
• First Beacon Tower of the Great Wall 长城第一墩: Once called the Taolai River Tower; built in 1539 under Li Han on a cliff about 56 m above the river.
• Wei–Jin Tombs 魏晋墓葬: Nine of the 18 excavated tombs at Xincheng have painted brick murals, usually one picture to a brick.