Xihu Things to Do

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So you thought the Great Wall ended at the First Signal Beacon tower at Jiayuguan, huh? Wrong.
The positioning of Jiayuguan as the end of the Great Wall was a Ming creation, as it was a particularly good natural location with a huge (56 metre deep) gorge to protect from attacks from the south with the wall protecting fhe northern approach. Jiayuguan itself is at the tip of a very slim, long sword that extends along the Hexi corridor from Wuwei.

Earlier, the wall had extended far into the Anxi desert, to the east of the fabled Taklimakan - the sand sea of death - and even into that huge empty plain: even now the Taklimakan is a fearsome desert, one of the most inhospitable on the planet. The Great Wall was intended to protect the oases from marauding northern tribes as far as the Yumenguan and Yangguan - both of which can still be visited, several hours (for the former) west of Dunhuang. But it was the southern neighbours who proved most troublesome for these frontier Chinese, with Tibetan armies and bandits bothering the settlers. If you head south through any pass into the Qilian, you will find great fortresses far bigger than most on the Great Wall to protect the plain from the pesky Tibetans. Good examples are on the road from Zhangye to matisi and on the way to the 1st July Glacier from Jiayuguan.

Here, in the desolate Anxi desert, the Great Wall strides across the flat plain, now succumbing to the ravages of wind and water erosion. It is a formidable sight.