The world’s most famous bulwark

China’s most distinctive and enduring icon is its Great Wall – Chángchéng 長城 – or as it is sometimes described, Wan-li Ch’ang-ch’eng 萬里長城 (10,000-mile Long Wall). The Great Wall is of course a global icon, one of the wonders of both the ancient and modern worlds, extending 21,196.18 km in length from west to east. Sections of the Wall are around 2,300 years old, dating from the Warring States era. The western end of the Wall by consensus is Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu Province (north-central region of China), but where is the eastern end-point?(Source: Lonely Planet)

Three hundred or so kilometres due east of Beijing is Shanhaiguan (literally “mountain – sea – pass”) in Liaoning Province, one of the Great Wall’s principal passes (popularly acclaimed in China as “the first pass under Heaven”. The Great Wall at Shanhaiguan dates from the 16th century and is 7,138m long with a central fortification, Zhendong Tower, a 4.8k square wall and barbican. The region it defends traditionally has had a strategic importance to China. The section of the Wall here stands between the Yan Mountains and the Gulf of Bohai, its location being easy to hold and hard to mount an assault against made it ideal to repel any invasions from the northern nomadic tribes of Manchuria such as the Khitan, Jurchen and the Manchus. [‘Shanhai Pass’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

‘Old Dragon’s Head’
Five kilometres east of central Shanhaiguan is the what is often commonly thought of as the ultimate stretch of the Great Wall, known as Laolongtou. The wall at Laolongtou (‘Old Dragon’s Head‘✱), built in 1381 during the Ming Dynasty, has been a strategic defensive point for much of Chinese imperial history. To the north of Laolongtou Wall is Ninghai City, a (roughly) square fortress. It’s architectural features include Chenghai Pavilion and Jinglu Beacon Tower. The site also contains an archery field and a military-themed museum (uniforms, helmets, a sabre weighing 83 kilos). The far eastern section of the wall is known as Estuary Stone, on either side of the end section are long strips of sandy beach.

Hushan Great Wall

虎山长城; Hǔshānchángchéng
On appearances ‘Old Dragon’s Head’ seems an appropriate point to locate the end of the Wall. Here’s where the eastward march of the Wall finally hits the sea at the Bohai Gulf, enters the water and continues some 22.4 metres and then abruptly ends⊟. Laolongtou seems a poetically apt spot for the long, long wall to end, and it seems logical, right?❂ Few would have disagreed with this before 1989…in that year another section of the Great Wall was unearthed further east and further north of Laolongtou. The wall, which extends over a mountain (Hushan or Tiger Mountain) for about 1,200m, is just north of a Chinese border city, Dandong (bordering North Korea across the Yalu River). In 2009 the Chinese government, based on the research undertaken by CASS, recognised the Hushan wall as the eastern terminus of the Great Wall. [‘Hushan Great Wall’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

PostScript: Goguryeo controversy
The North Korean perspective maintains that Beijing’s identification of the Hushan wall as Chinese is a continuation of its practice of undermining the historical sovereignty of Korea’s Goguryeo Kingdom (1st century BC to 7th century AD). The background to this volatile issue lies in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’s (CASS) 2002 revision of the area’s history…CASS’s North East Project concluded that Goguryeo was not an independent state, the ‘proto-Korea’ that the Koreans affirm, it was historically merely a vassal of the ‘Middle Kingdom’. Both Koreas expressed outrage at this, feelings of nationalism were stirred up and Sino-Korean relations took a nosedive. Suspicions on both sides persist…the historic Goguryeo Kingdom encompassed an area comprising the bulk of the Korean peninsula and a portion of both Russian and Chinese Manchuria, so both Korea and China harbour fears that the other may at some point pursue irredentist claims on part of its territory. [‘How an Ancient Kingdom Explains Today’s China-Korea Relations’, (Taylor Washburn) The Atlantic, 15-Apr-2013), www.theatlantic.com].

Historic map of the twin cities Dandong/Sinuiji ≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣
✱ so-called because the end part (above the sea) is thought to resemble a dragon (long) resting its head (tou) on the ground
⊟ from Laolongtou Wall’s end it is about 305km back to Beijing
❂ logical because the wall enters the sea at Bohai and the vast structure can be physically observed to end, but the issue here is that the Great Wall of China is not some unbroken, perpetually contiguous, frontier entity, it is a series of walls (sections) which meander, end then start again, right across the frontier of China