A Wall above Changping
Around the time I was gathering what information I could find online about Gonghuacheng, I started to come across maps and illustrations that showed walls stretching from the large red gate at the entrance to the Ming Tombs Area (in Chinese we call this area 十三陵 shísān líng, Thirteen Tombs).
Occasionally in the seven years that we have lived in Changping we have thought we have caught glimpses of something like a wall snaking along the hillsides just north of town. We could never get a clear look though, until recently, that is.
After seeing possible wall from the road, and the (admittedly not terribly conclusive) documentation online that there probably at the very least was a wall on that hill some centuries ago, we decided to head up that hill to take a look.
We found well-worn paths...
...from where we were afforded lovely views of the Ming Tombs across the valley.
But then we were surprised to come across these stairs.
More after the jump
While we scaled the steps, we sometimes saw along the sides rocks and bricks that could have been part of a Ming Wall. We thought that if there had been a wall here, we were walking along its path, even if nothing was still standing (because, even in China, there is something that does not like a wall). It wasn't long, though, that we came across something that seemed to defy time and elements.
Continuing further up the hill was even more fruitful to finding evidence that a Ming wall once covered this ridge.
Several of these giant blocks of cut stone, the kind of which we have seen all over other Ming Dynasty Great Wall and Great Wall related structures, were exposed, but barely. I have to imagine that if one were to dig under the centuries of dirt, more would be visible.
It was hard to tell if the bricks that had made up the outer shell of the wall had been hauled down the hill and repurposed into houses and farm terracing (as we have seen before), or if they had merely fallen away when this wall no longer served a purpose. Intermittently we would see pieces of wall strewn below where we walked.
We wanted to see how far along this ridge there still remained wall.
Brigid and I reached this spot first, and almost fell over laughing. As if the hike up the hill weren't enough exertion, there was a little exercise area like we see in public parks all over China. These were placed right over where we thought the wall would have continued, but instead we were on a flat, dusty area surrounded by rubble.
While we had not encountered another soul our whole hike up from our car and along the wall, there were a few people lingering around the benches and fitness area. I talked for a few minutes with two of them, both students at CUPL. They had not followed the same path we had, but rather one that led there from Changping Beihuan Lu. We have been to that park occasionally ourselves, but we never followed the trails this far because of a giant electrical tower that blocks the way. I had seen other people manage their way around it, but we were never at ease with trying our own luck. We always just turned back at that point.
It appeared that the wall may have continued from that spot down the other side of the hill toward today's Ming Tombs Reservoir. It was hard to tell looking just from there because the wall seemed to have melted into the path at that point. However, that exploration would have to wait for another day as it was growing late in the afternoon.
I still haven't found what to call this wall. It isn't exactly Great Wall so it doesn't appear in any lists or directories of Great Wall sites that we have used. Even the wooded area, complete with groomed path, does not even have a name on any online mapping program (and I didn't locate a sign). The wall was within the circle on the map below.
While I can find nothing recent that helps me give a name to this wall, it exists in enough older sources (like this 19th century water color held by the US Library of Congress) that I don't think we are finding a wall just because we want there to be one.
What it appears to be is an unrestored Ming wall, not significant enough to draw in great numbers of visitors, but still enough to pique our interest. If it is, in fact, part of the wall that connected to the Ming Tombs red gate, we may still have a lot more remnants to track down, both online (rabbit holes!) and on foot.
Occasionally in the seven years that we have lived in Changping we have thought we have caught glimpses of something like a wall snaking along the hillsides just north of town. We could never get a clear look though, until recently, that is.
After seeing possible wall from the road, and the (admittedly not terribly conclusive) documentation online that there probably at the very least was a wall on that hill some centuries ago, we decided to head up that hill to take a look.
We found well-worn paths...
...from where we were afforded lovely views of the Ming Tombs across the valley.
But then we were surprised to come across these stairs.
More after the jump
While we scaled the steps, we sometimes saw along the sides rocks and bricks that could have been part of a Ming Wall. We thought that if there had been a wall here, we were walking along its path, even if nothing was still standing (because, even in China, there is something that does not like a wall). It wasn't long, though, that we came across something that seemed to defy time and elements.
Continuing further up the hill was even more fruitful to finding evidence that a Ming wall once covered this ridge.
Several of these giant blocks of cut stone, the kind of which we have seen all over other Ming Dynasty Great Wall and Great Wall related structures, were exposed, but barely. I have to imagine that if one were to dig under the centuries of dirt, more would be visible.
It was hard to tell if the bricks that had made up the outer shell of the wall had been hauled down the hill and repurposed into houses and farm terracing (as we have seen before), or if they had merely fallen away when this wall no longer served a purpose. Intermittently we would see pieces of wall strewn below where we walked.
We wanted to see how far along this ridge there still remained wall.
Brigid and I reached this spot first, and almost fell over laughing. As if the hike up the hill weren't enough exertion, there was a little exercise area like we see in public parks all over China. These were placed right over where we thought the wall would have continued, but instead we were on a flat, dusty area surrounded by rubble.
While we had not encountered another soul our whole hike up from our car and along the wall, there were a few people lingering around the benches and fitness area. I talked for a few minutes with two of them, both students at CUPL. They had not followed the same path we had, but rather one that led there from Changping Beihuan Lu. We have been to that park occasionally ourselves, but we never followed the trails this far because of a giant electrical tower that blocks the way. I had seen other people manage their way around it, but we were never at ease with trying our own luck. We always just turned back at that point.
It appeared that the wall may have continued from that spot down the other side of the hill toward today's Ming Tombs Reservoir. It was hard to tell looking just from there because the wall seemed to have melted into the path at that point. However, that exploration would have to wait for another day as it was growing late in the afternoon.
I still haven't found what to call this wall. It isn't exactly Great Wall so it doesn't appear in any lists or directories of Great Wall sites that we have used. Even the wooded area, complete with groomed path, does not even have a name on any online mapping program (and I didn't locate a sign). The wall was within the circle on the map below.
While I can find nothing recent that helps me give a name to this wall, it exists in enough older sources (like this 19th century water color held by the US Library of Congress) that I don't think we are finding a wall just because we want there to be one.
What it appears to be is an unrestored Ming wall, not significant enough to draw in great numbers of visitors, but still enough to pique our interest. If it is, in fact, part of the wall that connected to the Ming Tombs red gate, we may still have a lot more remnants to track down, both online (rabbit holes!) and on foot.
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