Longshan Garrison Town

Longshan Garrison Town

Longshan Garrison Town is a cultural heritage site protected by Cixi City.

Longshan Garrison Town is located within Longshan Town, Cixi City, situated between Shitang Mountain and Fulong Mountain—two sites of fierce battles against Japanese pirates during the Ming Dynasty. According to the county annals of Cixi and Zhenhai, in the 20th year of the Hongwu reign (1387), General Tang He, Duke of Xinguo, built the town and dug a moat on the site of Shitang Tuan in Longtouchang, Dinghai County, establishing the North Gate. In the 16th year of the Yongle reign (1418), Commander Gu Xiang heightened the walls by eight feet and added the Southeast and West Gates, topping them with watchtowers, encircling them with barbicans, and digging an inner moat outside the walls. The town was three li and seventeen steps in circumference, twenty-five feet high, and twenty feet wide, with twenty watchtowers and alarm stations, eight hundred and fifty-six crenellations, and drawbridges outside the Southeast and West Gates. Inside the town were structures such as the garrison office, the Temple of the City God, and the Banner Temple, along with sixteen officials including one Commandant, one Deputy Commandant, one Pacification Commissioner, and one Centurion, and one thousand one hundred and twenty banner soldiers.

During the Ming Dynasty, Longshan Garrison was under the jurisdiction of Guanhai Guard, forming a two-garrison-one-guard coastal defense system with Sanshan Garrison to jointly combat Japanese pirates. During the Jiajing era, pirate raids plagued the entire coastline. In April of the 35th year of the Jiajing reign (1556), twenty-three pirate ships carrying over 1,600 invaders landed and raided Minghechang, followed by eight pirate ships with over a thousand raiders attacking Linshan and Sanshan. Days later, the two pirate groups joined forces to attack Guanhai Guard and Longshan Garrison but were repelled by government troops. They then turned to attack the Cixi County seat. At the time, the county had no city walls, leading to chaos across the fertile plains, with widespread arson and looting. Local officials fled, clutching their official seals. In May, the pirates attacked Longshan Garrison again but were fiercely fought off by troops. From August to September, they occupied Qiuwang as their stronghold. In this critical moment, Qi Jiguang, a regional military commander dispatched from Zhejiang to Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Taizhou, led his forces to station in Longshan Town. Soldiers and civilians fought side by side in bloody battles along the Longshan-Yanmen line, eventually annihilating the invading pirates. After the battle, Qi Jiguang visited Fulong Mountain and inscribed a poem at Fulong Temple: “The Buddhist temple stands secluded amid emerald hills, / Maple leaves glow red, stones gleam white, gates stand still. / Once I brandished my spear beneath these very peaks, / Now I drink again, drunk on sunset’s final thrill. / Withered grass still veils the paths where deer once strayed, / Autumn winds lock the secrets of Fulong in vain. / Gazing afar o’er the sea, I let out a long cry, / And shake my robes atop the hundred-foot sky-bridge high.”

In the early Qing Dynasty, pirate threats gradually subsided, and the guard system was disbanded. Thereafter, Longshan Garrison Town lost its military function and fell into gradual disrepair. In 1944, the North Gate was the first to be destroyed by Japanese bombing; in 1965, the West Gate collapsed under heavy rain, during which a villager from Longtouchang died while taking shelter beneath it. Fearing a repeat of the West Gate tragedy, the East Gate was demolished in 1967. The South Gate, originally used for military vehicle access, had its approach road built through the wall and was buried under soil before being dismantled in 1979. Though all four gates are gone, the town walls remain, standing four meters high in the north and south, two to three meters high in the east and west, and eight to ten meters wide.

Longshan Garrison Town stands as a historical testament to the people of Sanbei resisting foreign invasions. To protect this cultural heritage, in August 1986, the Cixi County Government designated Longshan Garrison Town as a third batch cultural heritage protection site.

Longshan Town: Located at the easternmost edge of the fertile Cixi region, Longshan Town borders the port city of Ningbo to the south, faces Hangzhou Bay to the northeast, and is traversed by National Highway 329. It is just 30 kilometers from downtown Ningbo, offering convenient transportation. Since the completion of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, the drive from Longshan to Shanghai takes only one and a half hours. The town covers a total area of 54 square kilometers, encompassing nine administrative villages, one neighborhood committee, one state farm, a registered population of 20,000.

A Long History: As early as the 16th year of the Yongping reign during the Eastern Han Dynasty (73 AD), people have lived here, giving the area a history of over 1,900 years. Longshan... More details about Longshan Town++