Fishing Town Fortress 钓鱼城

About Fishing Town Fortress

Surviving walls and gates reveal how the builders exploited the terrain, while administrative ruins show that this was also a functioning settlement. The rock-cut reclining Buddha adds an older religious layer to the military landscape. Rather than treating the entire hill as a single monument, look at the relationship between defensive edges, inner compounds and the rivers below.

In February 1259 Southern Song forces at Diaoyucheng repelled a Mongol army and killed the Mongol khan Möngke, an episode known as the Battle of Diaoyucheng. The site has been called the best-preserved ancient battlefield in China. It was listed as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level in November 1996, and in 1982 it was designated, together with nearby Jinyun Mountain in Beibei, part of the Jinyun Mountain-Bei Hot Spring-Diaoyucheng National Key Scenic Area.

Diaoyu Mountain forms a peninsula about 2.5 square kilometres in area, created where the Jialing and Qu (渠江) rivers meet and bend east of Hechuan; a Danxia-landform outcrop near its southern summit overlooks the Jialing River. According to local tradition, the mountain is named for a giant deity who is said to have fished in the river here to save the local people from famine.

The fortress is divided into an inner and an outer city; the outer city walls were built of dressed stone along the cliff edges. Inside are fields and a year-round spring, Shiguan Spring (始关泉), while arable land also extends along the surrounding slopes. The city had eight gates, including the Huguo (护国门), Qinghua (青华门) and Zhengxi (正西门) gates.

What to look for

• Huguo Gate and surviving walls: the hill’s defensive edge.
• Rock-cut reclining Buddha: a late Tang or early Song carving within the site.

Location & getting there

Getting to Fishing Town Fortress

Approach the archaeological park by road along Diaoyucheng Avenue in Hechuan. Use the fortress entrance as the destination; the separately located Diaoyu Fortress History and Culture Museum on Yiwu Avenue is not the hilltop site.