A Trip to Changyucheng (长峪城) village: The Place and its History

In addition to going to two temple fairs during this last Spring Festival, I did a short day trip outside of Beijing. I went with a group of 16 other people to 长峪城 village. This name literally means “Long Valley Castle.”

The photo at the top of this post shows why this place is called “Long Valley Castle” village. No, that wall isn't part of the Great Wall of China (长城). It is a remnant of the old Ming Dynasty castle (城堡) that was built here before the village.

As one call tell from the way the wall snakes up the hill, this castle occupied a much larger area than its run of the mill Medieval European counterpart (everything here, from the population to the monuments, is oversized!). The castle was used to shelter the garrison manning the nearby section of the Great Wall. If the sentries stationed on the Great Wall spotted invaders, the main body of troops would be rushed there to man the defenses.

The village is located in the mountains northwest of Beijing and is about 100 kilometers from the capital. The city of Changping (昌平), which is home to the famous Ming Tombs (明坟墓), is just beyond the first mountain pass (山口) beyond the village. This mountain pass was the place where the ancient “Silk Road” (丝绸之路) trade route met the Great Wall and passed through it on to Beijing.

This trip was organized by a Chinese travel agency whose name is “90 percent travel.” Like yours truly, the young Chinese fellow in charge of this activity, Hong Gao, studied at the University of Southern California (USC), and I found out about this excursion through the Beijing USC alumni chapter.

The other 16 people making this trip were also all laowai, save for a young Chinese lady from Hong Kong; she works in the Hong Kong Government's Beijing office. The other laowai included a few fellow Yanks, as well as people from Britain, the Philippines, Nigeria, Sweden, and Australia.

The trip cost 250 RMB ($36-37). It included transportation to and from 长峪成, lunch, which included dumplings and local food, a guided walking tour around the village, and a performance by the local people of the village's unique brand of Chinese opera.

I'll have more to say about all this in the next few blog posts. There will also be lots more photos of this place and its people. Stay tuned!

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

长峪城 (chang2yu3cheng2). As noted in the text, this name literally means “long” (长) “valley” (峪) “castle” (城). The latter character is a shortened form of the word “castle”, which can also be said as 城堡 (the second character is a falling/rising tone “bao”). By itself, 城 commonly means “wall”, so the Great Wall of China is the 长城, or literally “long wall”—it is, of course, very, very long indeed! And the Chinese word for “city” combines 城 with the character 市 (shi4). Since the latter character means “market”, the character combination for city literally means “walled market.”
明坟墓 (ming2fen2mu4). Readers who looked at the previous blog post will know that 明 means “bright”, so the Ming Dynasty (明朝), was literally the “bright” or “brilliant” dynasty (the character 明 appears in the Mandarin word for “clever”, 聪明 [cong1ming2]). The last two characters in 明坟墓 mean “tomb.”
山口 (shan1kou3). The first character is the Chinese word for “mountain”. As one can see, it looks like a mountain. The second character by itself means “mouth” or “opening.” Since a mountain pass is an opening between two mountains, 口 is combined with 山 to form the Chinese word for “mountain pass.”
丝绸之路 (si1chou2zhi1lu4). 丝 means silk and looks a bit like two strands of thread, while 路 is the basic Mandarin term for “road” or “route.”