Liujiakou Great Wall

Freshed up from yesterday's great wall hiking, at 8:30am we start from our lodging hotel in city center of Qinhuangdao for our first target today - Liujiakou Great Wall.

We follow the Jingha Expressway westward for 63km where we turn off the highway at Lulong County. Then we driver north to Liujiakou Great Wall. The whole driving distance is 92km.

Liujiakou Great Wall is the most western section of the Great Wall within Qinhuangdao. Liujiakou Great Wall is located in Liujiaying Village of Lulong County in Qinhuangdao. Now we are driving on Luqing Road ( from Lulong County to Qinglong County), an asphalt road passing several villages and towns before we reach Liujiakou Great Wall, a 29km drive.

Today is Saturday, a market day. Now we drive though the main street of Panzhuang Town, where the street has become a fair. The street is flanked by all kinds of vendors selling a rich variety of products and goods: saplings, vegetables, fruits, pork, and daily necessities. This scene could be hardly seen in the urban cities like Beijing.

The two village kids are born with the Great Wall. Are they interested in the Great Wall next door? They are too young to know the history and the importance of the Great Wall which they see very day.Will they keep staying at the village or go to the outside world like their big sisters and brothers after growing up? Some people want to make a living while some want to travel like us and many others.

The Luqing Road passes by the Liujiakou Pass at its west side. It is lucky that the tower hasn't been turned down to make way for the road construction like many unlucky great wall forts.

Many of the towers in the east and west sections of the wall around Liujiakou Village are collapsed and disappeared. This tower is still well preserved mainly due to the fact in the past it has been used as a warehouse to store stacks of dry grass and woods.

We are driving past the west side of the Liujiakou Pass on the Luqing Road.

We walk down the dry river bed in front of the tower at its south side. It is a 6-eye ( six windows) tower pass spanning the river which is now dry.The tower is 21.6m long, 10.6m wide and 16.7m high. The tower pass was rebuilt by the army and builders led by Qi Jiguang in the year 1579 in Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644).

As you can see, behind the tower, about 500m there is a quarry where stones are blasted, dug and cut for building materials. Its blasting reverberates the surrounding area, a severe damage to the great wall.

But who cares? Stones cutting is more profitable than great wall tourism. The local people want to make a living. Economic development and environmental protection is a contradiction here.