things should start from the beginning. In the 14th year of Hongwu (1381), General Xu Da was ordered by Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang to rebuild the Great Wall. He chose the starting point for the northeast of the Great Wall more than 10 kilometers east of Qinhuangdao City in Hebei Province today. While rebuilding the Yongping and Jieling Passes, Xu Da built a new "Shanhaiguan Pass" with Jiaoshan in the north and Bohai in the south. In fact, this is not a simple "pass". After more than 200 years of construction in the Ming Dynasty, this place has become a Great Wall with 129 The castle, pass, enemy platform, city platform, beacon tower and pier constitute a complete defense system of the Great Wall. The core of Shanhaiguan Pass is an ancient city defense complex composed of 7 castles, 10 major passes, 30 enemy towers, 62 towers, 18 beacon towers, and 16 piers on the Great Wall.
As an important pass in the eastern part of the Great Wall, Shanhaiguan is known as "the first pass between the two capitals and the first pass of the Great Wall". This is not a false reputation.
Open the map and you can find that the Liaoxi Corridor in front of Shanhaiguan Customs is the shortest and most convenient route from Northeast China to North China. After the pass is the fertile fields of Jidong Plain. Occupying this pass, you can control the 26 kilometers of the territory, which is equivalent to choking the throat channel connecting the northeast and north China, preventing the enemy from the north from moving south. Once Shanhaiguan falls, the iron cavalry outside the customs can easily enter the North China Plain, and Beijing will be in danger. Therefore, Gu Zuyu referred to Shanhaiguan as "the most important person" in the "Minutes of Reading History and Fangyu". As for the terrain of Shanhaiguan, it makes full use of the topography of the Liaoxi Corridor. : Songling Mountain lies on one side of the defensive zone, and has a Great Wall defensive wall. It is difficult to cross from the side, and the other side cannot be crossed along the coast. The narrow and long terrain in the middle is also not conducive to the cavalry assault that the Northern Army is good at.
Because of this, the Qing (Hou Jin) army entered the customs several times during the Huang Taiji period and avoided the tightly guarded Shanhaiguan of the Ming army, bypassing or entering the Xifeng Pass from the Horqin grassland, or entering Shanxi towards Xuanhua, Datong, or Enter Juyongguan from Yanqing, or enter the border wall from Qiangziling. Although several conquests were quite successful, they could not gain a foothold in the Great Wall after all. Huang Taiji himself admitted that this was all because of being blocked by Shanhaiguan. After the Qing Dynasty settled on Beijing, with Shengjing (now Shenyang) as its accompanying capital, Shanhaiguan was given a new meaning: "The Guan (Shanhaiguan) guards the Shenjing and the three provinces of Dongtong according to the mountains and seas, and connects to North Korea as far away as the throat of Xunjifu. The key to the two capitals", Shanhaiguan has thus become the key place of the throat of Dongtong Fengtian, Xilian Jifu, and Suoyue Liangjing.
Even in the peace period after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Shanhaiguan is also an important hub linking Northeast and North China. Beijing-Shenzhen Expressway, National Highway 102 and National Highway 205; Jingshan Railway and Shenshan Railway intersect here; Shanhaiguan Railway Station is a special-class station located in the middle section of Beijing-Shenzhen Railway and Beijing-Shenzhen High-speed Railway Passenger Dedicated Line; there is an airport in the southwest of Shanhaiguan City, which can take off and land Medium-sized passenger aircraft, direct to Beijing, Shijiazhuang, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places. The ancient city of Shanhaiguan, now a famous tourist attraction, reminds tourists all the time that this "first pass in the world" still shoulders the important task of defending the east gate of the capital Beijing.
