Old City Wall, Weifang

This posting is from my old blog and talks about the old city wall that once surrounded Weifang. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did researching it.

Weifang History Blog March 2009

It is holiday time and I finally have some time to get to my blog.

Last weekend I did something I have been hoping to do for a long time. I went to the remnants of the old Weifang City wall. There are only two small pieces of the wall remaining. These are in the west of the city so they are the Han Ting section, not the Kui Wen or main city area wall.

In the main CBD, there are two old gates but it is not clear to me if they are part of the original wall or built in the recent past. From what I have seen in diagrams, the original gates were within the stone walls and not stand alone wooden structures. But they are very old in themselves. I believe they were built after the removal of the old wall. I am waiting to confirm this information.

Bai Lang He. The old City Gate and the river (now artificial) that used to run through Weifang

According to what I do know, from a visit to a local museum, is that the city was divided into two sections Kui Wen in the East and Han Ting in the West. These are naturally separated by the main river, the Bai Lang He (pronounced HERR which is Chinese for river. Bai Lang means white waves). This is still the case only the river is now artificial, having been dried up by the construction of a large dam to the south of the city. The portion of the river that exists is currently being upgraded, as is much of Weifang, to make it an environmentally friendly area for people to spend some recreation time.

How the river looked just before we left in July 09

A museum model of what the city looked liked in the time of the wall.

I had seen one part of the old wall from a bus some time ago and only realised that there were two parts when we recently moved to the area nearby.

The remaining piece is an East-West wall and is cut in half by Xiang Yang Lu, a North-South street.

The purpose of the walls was not protection from human invaders but from the river. Apparently, the river used to flood regularly, inundating the town and the peoples’ houses. So the governor at the time decreed the building of the walls to keep the water out. His name was Zheng Ban Qiao and he wasn’t from Weifang but he had deep feelings for the area and the people and there are still some statues of him in his memory.

Zheng Ban Qiao

There is an old residence in the west of Weifang not far from the Bai Lang River, a very large walled complex that belonged to a well-to-do family in old Weifang. The Governor, Zheng Ban Qiao, used the residence as his offices. This is now a museum. It is where I learned about the walls and took the photos some years ago. It is being preserved while everything around it has been torn down. Behind it is a temple, apparently the oldest temple in the Weifang area. Now unused and in bad condition, it is being restored along with the residence.

Four photos of the residential buildings

There are two other small rivers that used to flow through Weifang, Zhang Mian He and Yu He.

When I first came to Weifang, Yu He was a putrid black sess pool of rotten water. Now it is a lateral park that stretches from the centre of Weifang to the Peoples’ Square park in the east. All the storm water is now underground in large pipes and a beautiful artificial river with walking trails the full length of it on either side runs along the surface.