Jiayuguan Travel Guide

 

 

The establishment of Jiayu pass indeed costs a large amount of human resources and material resources. Under the extremely inconsiderable conditions of construction, it is really miraculous to successfully build up such a grand pass. Hence, there are many touching legends shared among the people.

 

It is said that in Ming Dynasty there was an artisan working for this pass, called Yi Kaizhan, who was good at arithmetic. As long as the materials needed were accounted by him, the accuracy and economization of material needed were available. The inspector did not believe it at all and required him to count the number of the bricks used for establishing this pass. After Yi's careful account, he said there were 99,999 bricks. Afterwards, the inspector bought the bricks according to his words and said I will kill you and punish the other workmen to work for more three years for penalty if there is one more brick left or lacked. Finally there was one brick left as the completion of the pass, and this brick was set on the dais. The inspector was joyful to find this and wanted to impropriate these workmen hire. However, Yi Kaizhan responded calmly: This brick was set by god, and it is immoveable. If you move it by force, the whole pass will be collapsed. The inspector did not dare to baffle him any more after hearing his word. From then on, this brick was kept there and nobody dared to remove it. Nowadays, we are able to see this brick on this pass.

 

When people built up this pass, they needed millions of stones with the length of 2 meters, width of 0.5 meter and thickness of 0.3 meter. The workmen chiseled those stones from black mountains, but nobody could carry them, and whats worse it was also far from the building site. All the workmen worried about the delay of time for completing the pass. In case they did not finish it on time, they would be killed by the inspectors. When they were sighing for this urgent problem, there was a thunder happening on the top of the mountain, and then a piece of silk with several Chinese characters fell down from the clouds. Those workmen understood the method presented by the heaven after they saw the silk. They did everything following the implication from the heaven and poured the water onto the path in the winter until the ice appeared. They put the stone onto the iced road and transported them out of the mountains. Eventually they succeeded in moving the stones to the building sites on time, furthermore they also saved much materials. Those workmen built a temple to thank the god for its aid. From then on all the craftsmen who finished the learning from his teacher must pay respect to god here.
 
Geography: It is  located in  middle of Hexi Corridor of Gobi Desert, and it is will be spent 5-6 hours  by bus to arrive in Dunhuang Its neighboring Areas include Qinghai, Shaanxi, and Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, and Ninxia Hui municipality. Its whole area covers 2,935 sq km.  Han, Hui, Hazake, Tibetan, Yugu, Dongxiang, Baoan, Tu, Mongolian , and Manchu are its major nationalities.

 

Climate: It is very hot in summer and cold in winter and the temperature in different seasons are sharp it is an aridity climate.

 

Transportation: The traffic system in Jiayuguan is not so advanced. The trains and buses relatively are more popular and available than airs.