Dajingmen is the best-known gate in the old wall of Zhangjiakou, on the road that climbs from the Hebei basin towards the Mongolian plateau. The gate was built in the Ming and rebuilt in the Qing; its inscription reads 'great frontier gate'. For centuries the traffic through it was commercial as much as military: tea, cloth, furs and livestock moved between the plain and the steppe, and the gate gave Zhangjiakou its role as a trading town.
Dajingmen at Zhangjiakou is the only one of the Great Wall's four great passes called a gate. It was built in 1644 beside a border market that had traded with the steppe since 1571, and its four-character inscription dates from 1927.