page_title: Ming Great Wall
section_title: The Walls of Xuanfu–Datong and the western reaches
hierarchical_section_title: Ming Great Wall / History / The Walls of Xuanfu–Datong and the western reaches
caption_attribution_description: 中文: 河北省张家口市境内的长城关隘大境门。
context_page_description: The Ming Great Wall, built by the Ming dynasty, forms the most visible parts of the Great Wall of China today. A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the Ming walls measure 8,850 km from Jiayu Pass in the west to the sea in Shanhai Pass, then looping over to terminate in Manchuria at the Hushan Great Wall. This is made up of 6,259 km sections of actual wall, 359 km of trenches and 2,232 km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
  While the Ming walls are generally referred to as "Great Wall" in modern times, in Ming times they were called "border barriers" by the Chinese, since the term changcheng was said to evoke imagery of the tyranny of Qin Shi Huang and was associated with the Qin Great Wall.
context_section_description: With the Ordos now adequately fortified, the Mongols avoided its walls by riding east to invade Datong and Xuanfu (宣府; present-day Xuanhua, Hebei Province), which were two major garrisons guarding the corridor to Beijing where no walls had been built. The two defence lines of Xuanfu and Datong left by the Northern Qi and the early Ming had deteriorated by this point, and for all intents and purposes the inner line was the capital's main line of defence. Starting from the 1520s, proposals were made to strengthen the defences of this region, but the plan was disrupted by the local populace's resistance to the prospect of labour; only in the 1540s did work proceed in earnest.
  From 1544 to 1549, a defensive building program took place on a scale unprecedented in Chinese history. The project was led by Weng Wanda (翁萬達; 1498–1552), the Supreme Commander of the Xuan–Da defence area (宣大總督), which was responsible for the Xuanfu, Datong, and Shanxi areas. Troops were re-deployed along the outer line, new walls and beacon towers were constructed, and fortifications were restored and extended along both lines. Firearms and artillery were first mounted on the walls and towers around this time, for both defence and signalling purposes. The project's completion was announced in the sixth month of 1548, but the walls were steadily augmented for a time after that. At its height, the Xuan–Da portion of the Great Wall totalled about 850 kilometres (530 miles) of wall, with some sections being doubled-up with two lines of wall, some tripled or even quadrupled. The outer frontier was now protected by a wall called the "outer border" (外邊, wàibiān) that extended 380 kilometres (240 mi) from the Yellow River's edge at the Piantou Pass (偏頭關) along the Inner Mongolia border with Shanxi into Hebei province; the "inner border" wall (內邊, nèibiān) ran southeast from Piantou Pass for some 400 kilometres (250 mi), ending at the Pingxing Pass; a "river wall" (河邊, hébiān) also ran from the Piantou Pass and followed the Yellow River southwards for about 70 kilometres (43 mi). The Hebei section of the Great Wall was further fortified by planting trees along the wall.
  As with Yu Zijun's wall in the Ordos, the Mongols shifted their attacks away from the newly strengthened Xuan–Da sector to less well-protected areas. In the west, Shaanxi province became the target of nomads riding west from the Yellow River loop. The westernmost fortress of Ming China, the Jiayu Pass, saw substantial enhancement with walls starting in 1539, and from there border walls were built discontinuously down the Gansu Corridor to Wuwei, where the low earthen wall split into two. The northern section passed through Zhongwei and Yinchuan, where it met the western edge of the Yellow River loop before connecting with the Ordos walls, while the southern section passed through Lanzhou and continued northeast to Dingbian. The origins and the exact route of this so-called "Tibetan loop" are still not clear.
  In the east, the Tümed Mongols under Altan Khan raided Sihaiye and Dabaiyang (大白陽) in the seventh month of 1548. These points were much further east than previous raids and much closer to Beijing. The terrain there proved difficult to traverse, and so fortifications were not seen as urgently needed before the raids. In response, Weng Wanda proposed to close the gaps by connecting the walls of Xuan–Da with the signal towers of the eastern Jizhou defence command (薊州鎮). Only one sixth of the 436,000 liang of silver demanded for this project was allotted, and Weng Wanda supervised only briefly before leaving office on the death of his father.
caption: The Great Wall at Dajingmen, part of the Xuanfu stretch of the Great Wall. The gate structure is a Qing dynasty construction.
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