City Gates 城门

Longshou Gate 龙首关

Northernmost gate of the Dali plain.

Longshou Gate was the gate in the northernmost wall protecting the Dali plain to the north. It is situated at the narrowest section between Cangshan and Erhai, where a relatively short wall could be erected to to span the width of the plain. In satellite images, the remnants of the earth walls can still be discerned. 

While the existing gate is certainly of newer construction, Xu Xiake 徐霞客 mentions the gate in his description when entering the Dali plain on the 11th day of the 3rd month in 1639.

When the new national highway was built, it shortly became a scandal that the construction firm simply dug through this earth wall without giving archeologists the opportunity first to excavate the area and search for any culturally significant item.