WITNESS TO STORIED HISTORY

Datong, as an ancient city in North China's Shanxi province, has served as a military stronghold and commercial hub for most of its history since 300 BC. The nomads from Mongolia to its north, the Han people from central China to its south as well as peoples from Central Asia to its west and Northeast Asia to its east traded and fought with each other in Datong, making it a crossroad of civilizations.

Due to the lack of high mountains to protect itself from invaders from the north, the Mongolian cavalry was able to descend all the way south to the city. So the Han people built Great Walls in the north and south of Datong, and the project lasted from the Warring State Period (476-221 BC) to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The city's rampart today is just a part of the Great Wall.

If the Great Wall is compared to a necklace, Datong is like a dazzling pearl installed in the middle of it. The Great Wall, which meanders from east to west in northern Shanxi, bifurcates in the province into the outer Great Wall in the north, which largely serves as a border between Shanxi and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region to its north, and the inner Great Wall, which is dozens of kilometers south of the outer Great Wall.

The design partly indicates how much pressure Central China was exposed to throughout history on the part of Shanxi, as the inner Great Wall was needed to serve as double insurance, with the ancient city of Datong located in between.

The Great Wall in Datong has witnessed many important conflicts in China's history over the past 2,000 years, and the latest one happened during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), when the Great Wall served as a major fortification for the Chinese people to resist the westward and southward invasion of the Japanese army.

Thanks to the effective protection of the historical wonder, the outer Great Wall in the north of Datong remains today like a dragon stretching over 250 kilometers in the north of Shanxi over mountain ranges.

Because of the various types of terrain as well as the need to adapt to the requirements of different wars, the Great Wall in Datong took various forms and structures, which is rare compared to the rest of the Great Wall, and acts as proof that Datong used to be the main battlefield among all strongholds of the Great Wall that stretches more than 21,000 kilometers from the Bohai Bay to the Hexi Corridor in Gansu province.

Today, the Great Wall has become a tourist attraction, and decades of peace have seen it embedded seamlessly into local natural landscapes and environments. For instance, the Lierkou section of the Great Wall built during the Ming Dynasty in Tianzhen county of Datong, is regarded the most intriguing section of the Great Wall in north Shanxi, whose charm is reflected in "four beauties and one spectacle".

The so-called "four beauties", refer to the four seasons each having beautiful scenery, spring for the "apricot reflecting the Great Wall", summer for the "cold moon edging the Great Wall", autumn for the "red leaves dying the Great Wall", winter for the "snow capping the Great Wall"; The so-called "one spectacle" refers to a section of "mis-built" Great Wall, which runs north-south from the foot of the mountain and climbs to the top of the mountain along the ridge, showing an inverted T-shape branching out from the main section of the Great Wall, which is rare across the entirety of this grand project. While some argue that it could not be a mistake as it might have served certain functions during a special period of time, its true purpose remains unknown today.

The Wulushan section of the Great Wall in Zuoyun county of Datong is one of the few sections of the Great Wall that features the co-existence of walls built in multiple dynasties. The Great Wall of the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220) and the Great Wall of the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577) run across the wilderness; The Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty is more complete, like a dragon winding up and down along the 2,200-meter-high Motianling mountain range, heroic and spectacular, becoming the highest part of the Great Wall.

Notably, the remains of a deserted Gothic church built in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) stand not far away from the ancient and desolate Great Wall, making it a unique cultural spectacle.

At the foot of the Motianling mountain range, there stand a number of arrow towers; the Ninglukou Arrow Tower is the best preserved example in the central and western flanks of the Great Wall.

The Yuehuachi Castle is a special site among all of the ancient frontier fortress castles. It is located in the inner side of the Ming Great Wall in the north of Weilu village of Zuoyun county, Datong, which integrates various military functions such as a garrison, lookout and sounding the alarm. With the Great Wall as its north wall, the circumference of the castle is about 260 meters.

Different from most of the desolate forts of the Great Wall, the Shoukou Fort in Yanggao and the Desheng Fort in Xinrong have been encircled by fertile farmlands and prosperous towns today.

Xu Yajie, a tourist from Zhejiang interested in history, said: "In the past, the Great Wall held more of a symbolic meaning for us. It was not until I came to Datong that I saw the Great Wall in various forms. It can not only snake and rise like a dragon, but can also be a section of earth wall, an arrow tower or a castle. The Great Wall in the mind begins to become vivid."

In recent years, with the building of the Great Wall tourist highway, the Xinping Fort, Shoukou Fort, Desheng Fort, Batai Church and Yonggu Tomb, the burial site of Feng Empress Dowager of the Beiwei Dynasty (386-534) — when Datong served as the capital city known as Dragon City — have become more accessible to tourists.

Liu Zhiyao, a researcher of the Great Wall from Zuoyun, said: "After the opening of the highway and with the maturing of the supporting facilities of scenic spots, there will be a large number of tourists flocking to the once rarely-visited spots in the deep mountains of the Great Wall, and some local tourism resources can be developed."

Peng Ke'er in Datong contributed to this story.