National Day in Xuanhua: City Walls
In the days since Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, the news has been full of images and reports of the crush of tourists in Beijing as well as other popular sites earlier this week. We lucked out, our interests not overlapping with those of the millions of others milling around our region. Everywhere we went those two days we were some of the only people, if not the only people, visiting.
At the Great Wall in Huanghaucheng, we saw no one, except the farmers that control access to this section.
The Liao tombs were so empty we suspected that they weren't even open for tourists and actually abandoned.
And then when we were in Xuanhua, we were among about 10 people on the City Walls.
More walls-and-cannons tourism after the jump.
The last time we went to Xuanhua, it was very late in the afternoon when we arrived. For some reason our GPS would not accept the city name as we typed it in, so we followed road signs to guide us. That meant we took a less direct route via expressway, and instead on smaller, poorly maintained county roads. Monday, we were able to get there much faster, so we had time in the afternoon to visit both the Liao Tombs and the city walls of Xuanhua.
Xuanhua was once a walled city, and some of its ancient tamped earth walls remain. In sections, like around the south gate, it has been restored to bricked glory. Near this old gate turnstiles and ticket booths have also been built, but currently there is no charge to go up on the walls.
It was not a great length of wall to walk, but enough to get a feel for how fortified the city of Xuanhua once was. During the Ming Dynasty, a garrison of 100,000 troops were stationed here, far outnumbering the 9,000 residents at the time. It was an important part of the defense of Beijing from the northern invaders.
For us, it was the kind of place we are most accustomed to visiting. I call it wall-and-cannon tourism.
Outside of the walls, the streets were decorated for National Day, just like everywhere else in China. There were greenery fish.
And, almost exactly like the one we have in Changping, a light-up double-faced peacock.
There was another type of decoration draped across the fronts of several restaurants near this gate, anti-Japanese red banners. I was surprised to see them, there in the middle of nowhere Hebei, weeks after this activity had quieted down (sort of) in Beijing. I am not going to post pictures of them because they made me uncomfortable. In Beijing, so much of the anti-Japanese activity seemed to be orchestrated for a particular time and place and was very quickly extinguished. It seems that might not be the case everywhere.
At the Great Wall in Huanghaucheng, we saw no one, except the farmers that control access to this section.
The Liao tombs were so empty we suspected that they weren't even open for tourists and actually abandoned.
And then when we were in Xuanhua, we were among about 10 people on the City Walls.
More walls-and-cannons tourism after the jump.
The last time we went to Xuanhua, it was very late in the afternoon when we arrived. For some reason our GPS would not accept the city name as we typed it in, so we followed road signs to guide us. That meant we took a less direct route via expressway, and instead on smaller, poorly maintained county roads. Monday, we were able to get there much faster, so we had time in the afternoon to visit both the Liao Tombs and the city walls of Xuanhua.
Xuanhua was once a walled city, and some of its ancient tamped earth walls remain. In sections, like around the south gate, it has been restored to bricked glory. Near this old gate turnstiles and ticket booths have also been built, but currently there is no charge to go up on the walls.
It was not a great length of wall to walk, but enough to get a feel for how fortified the city of Xuanhua once was. During the Ming Dynasty, a garrison of 100,000 troops were stationed here, far outnumbering the 9,000 residents at the time. It was an important part of the defense of Beijing from the northern invaders.
For us, it was the kind of place we are most accustomed to visiting. I call it wall-and-cannon tourism.
Outside of the walls, the streets were decorated for National Day, just like everywhere else in China. There were greenery fish.
And, almost exactly like the one we have in Changping, a light-up double-faced peacock.
There was another type of decoration draped across the fronts of several restaurants near this gate, anti-Japanese red banners. I was surprised to see them, there in the middle of nowhere Hebei, weeks after this activity had quieted down (sort of) in Beijing. I am not going to post pictures of them because they made me uncomfortable. In Beijing, so much of the anti-Japanese activity seemed to be orchestrated for a particular time and place and was very quickly extinguished. It seems that might not be the case everywhere.
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