The First Mountain East of Beijing

Mount Panshan (盘山) is a ridge in Jizhou District, 120 kilometres from the centre of Tianjin and 90 kilometres from Beijing. The scenic area covers twenty square kilometres and its highest peak stands 858 metres above sea level. It is a national key scenic area of China, and in 2007 it was rated a national 5A tourist attraction. It is also known by a phrase that tells you how it has been promoted: the first mountain east of Beijing (京东第一山). The name is a claim about position as much as about height, because the hill stands between two large cities and belongs comfortably to neither.

Jizhou is the only district of Tianjin with mountain terrain, and Panshan is not alone in it. Limutai, Jiushanding, Baxianshan and Huangyaguan all lie inside the same district, which makes the north of the municipality a different country from the plain that begins an hour's drive south. The district's list of protected sites shows how much of that landscape is formally recognised: the Panshan anti-Japanese base site, the relic pagoda of Tiancheng Temple, the Dingguang Buddha relic pagoda, the Weifang site and the Han tomb groups at Bieshan and Bangjun all appear on it. A mountain here is never only scenery; it is also a defence line and a burial ground.

Because Jizhou is the municipality's only mountain district, it is also its only orchard country. The district grows fruit trees, and three products are recorded as its specialities: persimmons from Panshan, chestnuts from Xiaying and walnuts from Bangjun. These are ordinary cash crops of hill villages rather than luxury goods, and they tie the mountain to the market towns below it. They also explain the shape of the local economy: the slopes that make the mountain worth climbing are the same slopes that have to produce a harvest each autumn, on thin soil and through a short season.