Ancient castle opens to visitors in Guizhou province

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 ◆ Ancient castle opens to visitors in Guizhou province

A 745-year-old castle near Zunyi City in southwest China's Guizhou Province opened to visitors recently.

Hailongtun Castle is a well-preserved military installation of a type rarely found in China, said Yang Shengming, director of the Guizhou Provincial Tourist Bureau.

Built in 1257 during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the castle is surrounded by the Longyan Mountains on the three sides, with only one narrow path through nine passes to the outside world.

It was the main battlefield of the Ping-Bo campaign, initiated by the imperial court of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) against Yang Yinglong, a feudal lord who rebelled over excessive taxes.

During the two-year campaign, 240,000 cavalrymen and infantry from Sichuan, Guizhou, Hunan, Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Henan, Gansu and Shandong provinces besieged the castle on four sides.

When they breached the defenses, they burned all the wooden structures, leaving only the castle walls, fortifications on the passes and the "water prison" where inmates were locked in half- flooded cells.