Brief Introdution: The Jiayuguan Fort is located in the west of Jiayuguan city around 5 km. It is the west end of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD) great wall. 'Jia Yu' means beautiful valley because it was built in the valley between two mountains . Maybe you know the Shanhaiguan fort in the east, but Jiayuguan fort was built much earlier than Shanhaiguan fort. And Jiayuguan was pretty well preserved, so it got a nice reputation which is called the Heavenly Pass. The Jiayuguan fort can be the westmost customs in Ming dynasty (1368-1644 AD), where the passports should be checked and tax would be collected as people went through it . It started to be built from 1372 AD,which took Ming dynasty (off and on) 168 years to finish. So the construction of Jiayuguan fort was huge at that time. If make a bird view , the whole fort looks like a trapezoidal ,with an area of 33,000 square meters. The fort consists of five parts, which are outer city ( for common citizen to stay and do business), barbican (like a trap city, very dangerous),inner city (the core of the whole fort),luo city (luo means surrounding to protect inner city) and the dry moat ( no water, but a lot of sharp spikes were set at the bottom). The inner city is the core of the whole fort, which is 640m in circumference and covers an area of 25,000 square meters. The wall is 9 meters high and around 3 meters wide at the bottom, and it is made of loess, adobe and bricks.

Why did Ming dynasty choose here to build the Jiayuguan fort ?

Two reasons: The first reason is because of the special location. The fort was built in the middle of He Xi corridor, which was an important way along the ancient silk road. He means yellow river, Xi means west. He Xi means the west of yellow river. If we have a bird view of this, it looks like a corridor because it was sandwiched by two mountains. In the south is Qilian mountain, and in the north is northern mountain. The hexi corridor stretches around 1000 km from east to west in Gansu province. The widest area of the corridor is over one hundred km, but the narrowest place is near Jiayugaun and only 15km from south to north ,where is a good location to build the fort. That is why to choose here.  At beginning the general Feng Sheng noticed the important location and special terrain and he suggested emperor Zhu Yuan zhang to built the Jiayuguan fort.  

Second reason is relative with water resource. Over here there is a large lake called Jiu Yan spring lake which means many springs. Conversely, there is a large area of Gobi desert without more water in the west of Jiayuguan. In a sense, defending water is defending the fort.

Legendary Stories:

The Brick of Keeping the Fort Stable: It refers to the single brick which was put on the eave of west barbican. It is said at that time there was a very clever engineer named Yi Kaizhan who was good at calculating. He’s in charge of building this section of the fort. Meanwhile there was a bad supervisor who was in charge of providing bricks. The supervisor wanted to ask for  bribe from the engineer. But the engineer was very upright, and he did not like to bribe the supervisor. So the supervisor was unhappy and tried to find a way to embarrass the engineer. He ordered the engineer to work out the detailed number of bricks for construction of that section, so that he could provide enough bricks according to the number. But he announced if one brick was left or one brick was in shortage after the construction was finished, the engineer would be killed as punishment. (What a prickly request!) The engineer had no choice. He got the number 99,999 of bricks after detailed calculation. But after the section was built up, one brick was left. What shall he do? He thought it over and put the brick on the eave of western barbican. As the supervisor got the news, he set out to condemn the engineer. But the engineer looked so composed , and he said he dreamed of an immortal who suggested the brick was just put there in order to keep the whole fort stable. If the brick was removed, the fort would collapse. Although the supervisor was dubious about this, he dare not look into so much. So the brick was put  there until now.

Transporting rocks on the ice path: At that time thousands of rocks were needed for the construction of the fort. The rocks must be 2 m long, 0.5 m wide and 0.3 m thick, which took a lot of work to do. After a lot of work the rocks were successfully cut from the black mountain according to the size, but how could they transport so many big and heavy rocks from black  mountain to the fort? At that time there was no any machines. Only  carts, but they were not quite enough. As winter was coming, the deadline of supplying enough rocks to the construction of fort was getting closer and closer. The workers were afraid to be killed because of delaying the date of construction of the fort. At the moment as they were worrying about this, suddenly above the top of black mountain a clap of thunder rumbled and from the heaven a piece of silk scarf written with two characters flew down slowly. The workers saw the two characters vaguely. They softly read it  out 'Bing Dao' in Chinese. Bing Dao means ice path in English. At that moment they seemed to be awaked from dream. So one special path was made from the  black mountain to the fort. To winter time a lot of water was splashed on the path, then the special ice path was built. Numerous rocks were slided from mountain to the fort on the ice path. The problem of transporting rocks was solved.

Goats carrying Bricks: The construction of fort needs a lot of bricks as well. Over 600 hundred years ago, a lot of work depended on handwork. The workers needed spend much more time and energy to carry bricks to the top of the wall, which is 9 meters high, through a narrow and steep slope path. It was so hard , but efficiency is very low. One day as a shepherd boy was passing by the fort, driving his sheep back home, he noticed the hard job for workers. An idea came to his mind. He tried to tie two bricks by a short rope and put on the back of the goat. Then he drove the goat to carry bricks up to the wall, which looked so easy for the goat. The goat easily succeeded in carrying bricks. The workers found it was a good way to carry bricks. Then more and more goats started to be used to carry bricks. Another transportation problem was solved.That is the story.

Stone Beating and Swallow Tweeting: It’s said that long time ago one swallow couple made their nest in the inner city of the fort and lived there. One morning they flew out of the fort one by one to forage. To sunset time, the female swallow flew back home, but the male swallow was still not back . Until the gate of fort was closed, the male swallow could not fly in. The male swallow was so sad that it flew directly to beat the gate of thr fort. So it died. The female swallow worried about the male, so it just tweeted continuously until it died as well in the end. Although they both died,their souls seemed to be  staying there for a long time. Every time as people carried stone to beat the wall,the tweeting sound like “Jiu Jiu” from the swallow could be heard clearly, which seemed to tell their stories to people by the sound. From ancient time  to now swallows are lucky birds in local people’s mind. At that time hearing the tweeting voice of a swallow will be auspicious. So each time when the army set out to fight, the soldiers would like to be at the wall of inner city to beat the wall with stone to hear the tweeting sound, which mean they would be safe. Little by little even more and more people who passed the fort would like to be at the corner of inner city to beat the wall to get good luck, so that it becomes into a custom until now. (When you visit the fort and step in the gate of inner city, please turn right and walk to the corner of two walls. The print from beating times by times in the ancient time are still over there.) It is just a legendary story which used to describe the fort was so strong that  the swallows could not fly over.

The level : World cultural heritage & National AAAAA tourist attraction

Entrance fee:110 yuan RMB (May 1—Oct.31), 55 yuan RMB (Nov.1--Apr.30)

Selling Tickets Time:

Dates	Time
April 15—June 30	08:30—17:30
July 1—October 10	08:00--19:00
October 11—November 14	08:30—17:30
November 15—April 14	09:00--17:00

Better Seasons to Visit: April --November

Visiting Time Normally: about 1.5--2 hrs

Visiting Tips:1, Please note that much more walking will be done here. Walking stick will be strongly suggested if your legs are not so well.

2, Out of western gate of the fort, many interesting activities are there, such as camel ride, horse ride,compressed-air cannon, helicopter. If you like , you need prepare more cash for that or you can pay by Wechat and Alipay;

3, Do not forget to visit the great wall museum. After you finish the tour of the fort, you may walk back to the east gate and turn left to walk around 200 meters to the museum. If you do not like to walk  to the museum, you may take a electric car ,which is parking outside of the west gate ,directly to the great wall museum. (The ticket for the electric car costs 10m yuan RMB);

4, The ticket of the fort can be used to visit the overhanging great wall and the first beacon tower as well.

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