Yanmen Pass

Yanmen Pass, also called Xijing Pass, lies in the Yanmen mountains of Dai County in Xinzhou, about twenty kilometres north of the county seat, and it belongs to the group of wall passes known as the outer three, with Ningwu and Pianguan. What it holds is a corridor between the valleys of central Shanxi and the grassland of the steppe. A wall line was first carried through the gap in 557, under the Northern Qi; the fortifications standing today are Ming. In 1374 the Ming general Lu Xiang repaired the old pass and built a new fort town five kilometres to the east. The pass is a national key cultural relic and a 5A scenic area.