Old Dragon's Head

As the eastern starting point of the Ming Great Wall, the Old Dragon’s Head is located on the shore of the Bohai Sea, 4 kilometers south of Shanhai Pass, Hebei Province. Since Old Dragon' s Head is located on high terrain, the general of Ji Town in Ming Dynasty, Qi Jiguang had the "Sea Stone City" built on there. Just as a dragon head, the Sea Stone City stuck into the sea and danced with waves, through which the city earns the name “Old Dragon’s Head”.

The Old Dragon’s Head is the east starting point of the Ming Great Wall in Ji Town, which is located in the coastal highland, 5 kilometers south of Shanhai Pass. It is called the "Old Dragon" since people compare the Great Wall to a huge dragon. The dragon wanders through the desert, climbs up the Helan Mountain, crosses Taihang Mountain, climbs down the Yanshan Mountain, flies across the Bohai Sea, rolls a knot in Liaoxi corridor, crosses the Shanhai Pass and finally leads the neck into the sea. The part in sea is then the Old Dragon’s Head. The Old Dragon’s Head is an important part of the Great Wall. It forms a horn-shaped protection structure with the Jianshan Great Wall in the city north and the Weiyuan City in the city east, together they support the Shanhai Pass City.

From the Hongwu years of the early Ming Dynasty to the Chongzhen Years of the late Ming Dynasty, the Old Dragon’s Head had been continuously built and renovated for more than 260 years. After the territory being unified inside and outside the Great Wall in Qing Dynasty, the Old Dragon’s Head no longer had to function as the military defense, thereby becoming a resort for emperors and literatis to have sightseeing. Since the founding of the Qing Dynasty, the Emperor Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing, Daoguang have been to the Old Dragon’s Head many times, among which the Qianlong Emperor came here 4 times to broad the building and watch the sea, leaving a large number of precious poems and calligraphy works.

The monument on the Old Dragon’s Head read “Sky offered the vast Sea”, which is said to be a relic of Tang Dynasty. The four words describe the extraordinary charm of the scenery, as “Looking at the sky, we see the vast blue suitable for settings of all perspective”. The Old Dragon’s Head is one of the "Top 40 Chinese Tourist Resorts" and the national 5A level scenic spot. Boarding the spot and in the face of the turbulent vast sea, you can conjure the infinite reverie while enjoying the spectacular scenery depicted in a poem:

At the front of the Great Wall is the head of the dragon.,
To see further, people go upstairs,
Wind blows away clouds which cover the sun from time to time, .
A surge of waves settles anger and resentment in the heart.