Great Wall

Ming Great Wall

The Jiayu Pass, located in Gansu province, is the western terminus of the Ming Great Wall. From here, the wall travels discontinuously down the Hexi Corridor and into the deserts of Ningxia, where it enters the western edge of the Yellow River loop at Yinchuan. Here the first major walls erected during the Ming dynasty cut through the Ordos Desert to the eastern edge of the Yellow River loop. There, at Piantou Pass (t偏頭關,s偏头关,Piāntóuguān) in Xinzhou, Shanxi, the Great Wall splits in two with the "Outer Great Wall" (t外長城,s外长城,Wài Chǎngchéng) extending along the Inner Mongolia border with Shanxi into Hebei province, and the "Inner Great Wall" (t內長城,s內长城,Nèi Chǎngchéng) running southeast from Piantou Pass for some 400 km (250 mi), passing through important passes like the Pingxing Pass and Yanmen Pass before joining the Outer Great Wall at Sihaiye (四海冶, Sìhǎiyě), in Beijing's Yanqing County.