Qinhuangdao occupies the narrow strip where the Yan mountains meet the Bohai Sea. Shanhaiguan, the pass that controlled the road from the north China plain into Manchuria, gives the city its historical weight; Laolongtou carries the wall's eastern end into the water. Beidaihe, west along the coast, was developed as a foreign and then a Chinese summer resort, and its mudflats and offshore waters make it one of the best-known bird-watching points on the east coast.
Shanhaiguan was laid out in 1381 as a walled pass between the mountains and the Bohai. Its four gates, barbicans and corner towers were repaired repeatedly through the Ming, and the plaque over its east gate gave the pass the name it still carries.
At Laolongtou the eastern end of the Ming Great Wall runs into the Bohai Sea. A fort was built here in 1381, a sea wall added in 1579, and the point wrecked in 1900. The stretch was repaired in 1984.
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Beidaihe is a district of Qinhuangdao with 22.5 kilometres of coast, a ten-kilometre beach of fine yellow sand and shallow water, and a villa history that begins in 1898. It is also one of East Asia's busiest migration corridors, with a banding station and a wetland reserve.
ReadThe Ming pass between the Yan mountains and the Bohai Sea, known as the first pass under heaven.
The eastern end of the Ming wall, where a fort and a temple stand on a spit projecting into the Bohai Sea.
A seaside district west of Qinhuangdao, developed as a summer resort and now known for migrating birds.
