SHANHAIGUAN , "The Pass Between the Mountains and the Sea", a town at the northern tip of the Bohai Gulf, was originally built as a fortress in the Ming dynasty, to defend the eastern end of the Great Wall . The wall crosses the Yanshan Mountains to the north, forms the east wall of the town and meets the sea a few kilometres to the south. It's a sleepy, dusty little place of low buildings and quiet streets, still arranged along its original plan of straight boulevards following the compass points, intersected with a web of alleys. Dominating the town is a fortified gatehouse in the east wall, which for centuries was the entrance to the Middle Kingdom from the barbarian lands beyond. Far from being a solitary castle, Shanhaiguan originally formed the centre of a network of defences, and smaller forts, now nothing but ruins, existed to the north, south and east, and beacon towers were dotted around the mountains.
Shanhaiguan is a popular tourist destination with the Chinese, but doesn't seem to be much on the traveller circuit, which is odd, as it's well worth a visit. The town, small enough to walk around, is peaceful and pretty and has two good hotels, and the surrounding countryside contains some fine sturdy fortifications and remnants of the wall. Even buying a train ticket out is pretty stress-free. The best thing to do here is to rent a bike and spend a few days exploring
The Town
The biggest structure in town, the First Pass Under Heaven , a gate in the Great Wall, makes the surrounding buildings look puny in comparison. An arch topped by a two-storey tower, it must have looked even more formidable when it was built in 1381, with a wooden drawbridge over a moat 18m wide, and three outer walls for added defensive strength. Its name is emblazoned in red above the archway, calligraphy attributed to Xiao Xian, a Ming-dynasty scholar who lived in the town. The arch remained China's northernmost entrance until 1644, when it was breached by the Manchus.
These days, the gate (daily 7.30am-5.30pm; ¥20) is overrun by hordes of marauding tourists, and is at its best in the early morning before most of them arrive. A steep set of steps leads up from Dong Dajie to the impressively thick wall, nearly 30m wide. The tower on top, a two-storey, ten-metre-high building with arrow slits regularly spaced along its walls, is now a museum , appropriately containing weapons, armour and costumes, as well as pictures of the nobility so formally dressed they look like puppets. You can stroll a little way along the wall in both directions; an enterprising man with a telescope stands at the far northern end, and through it you can watch other tourists on the Great Wall at Jiaoshan several kilometres to the north, where the wall zigzags and dips along vertiginous peaks before disappearing over the horizon. There's plenty of tat for sale at the wall's base, including decorated chopsticks, hologram medallions and jade curios, while in a courtyard to the northern side, a statue of Xu Da, the first general to rule the fort, frowns sternly down on the scene.
Follow the city wall south from the gate, past CITS, and you come to the Great Wall Museum (daily 7.30am-6pm; ¥3, ¥5 for the annexe). This modern imitation Qing building has eight halls, showing the history of the region in chronological order from Neolithic times. Though there are no English captions, the exhibits themselves are fascinating and well displayed. As well as the tools used to build the wall, there's a display of the vicious weaponry used to defend and attack it, including mock-ups of siege machines and broadswords that look too big to carry, let alone wield. The last three rooms contain dioramas, plans and photographs of local historic buildings - the final room's model of the area as it looked in Ming times gives an idea of the extent of the defences, with many small outposts and fortifications in the district around. It's much better than any CITS map or glossy brochure and should inspire a few bike rides. An annexe outside the museum holds temporary art exhibitions.
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