"Not Going to Trendy, Instagrammable Small Towns" — Travel Notes: Shanxi Fanzhi

Introvert's Travel Diary: "Not Going to Trendy, Instagrammable Small Towns" — Travel Notes: Shanxi Fanzhi (Part 2) Pingxingguan Village: The Overlapping Shadows of a Great Wall Pass and Anti-Japanese War Memories For my final stop in Fanzhi County, I ventured into Pingxingguan Village—an ancient settlement nestled in the folds of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. The Loess Plateau in early spring had yet to shed its desolation, with crumbling beacon towers scattered along the ridgeline like weathered punctuation marks of war. When the deeply grooved wall at the village entrance suddenly came into view, I truly grasped the millennia of weight carried by the name "Pingxingguan." I. The Intertwining of Time and Space at the Pass and Battlefield Pingxingguan, as a geographical concept, is far more complex than imagined: * The Great Wall pass is definitively located in Hengjian Township, Fanzhi County, where remnants of a Ming-era brick archway and rammed-earth walls still stand—once a defensive stronghold for the Shanxi-Suiyuan Army. * The main battlefield site, however, lies 10 kilometers away in Qiaogou, Lingqiu County, where the 115th Division's ambush immortalized the "Pingxingguan Victory" in history. * Today's Pingxingguan Village sits precisely at the intersection of these two narratives. A Qing Dynasty chastity arch faces a weathered opera stage, while elders bask in the sun beneath the upturned eaves of the City God Temple. A plaque claims, "Marshal Lin Biao's warhorse was tethered here," though historical records identify this as a Shanxi-Suiyuan Army base. These blurred edges of memory, ironically, breathe life into history. II. War Memories Etched in the Great Wall's Fabric Climbing the northern fortress wall crowned with an old elm, the Ming Great Wall ruins stretch along the mountain ridge behind the village. The distant Lingqiu valley now houses a memorial museum, while Fanzhi's pass stands as a silent witness—both holding stories: the thunder of Mongol cavalry, the jingle of Shanxi merchants' camel bells, the roar of artillery in the Anti-Japanese War... all collapsed into a gust of wind across the Loess Plateau. III. Gazing Back on the 80th Anniversary of Anti-Fascist Victory The timing feels poignant—2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the global victory over fascism. Surveying the village from the pass ruins, I suddenly understood why both sites are included in the "Pingxingguan Battlefield Memorial." The Great Wall is not just a geographical divide but a vessel of memory: Lingqiu's museum preserves combat moments, while Fanzhi's ancient pass congeals a longer military narrative. Those scattered rammed-earth mounds are both Ming frontier fortifications and 1937's geographical footnotes. History never truly sleeps—it merely lies dormant in another form, beneath the very ground we walk on!