Guanxian Ancient City, the foremost city at the source of the Land of Abundance, accompanied by the ancient weir that has stood for a millennium

Guanxian Ancient City I believe that before visiting Dujiangyan, ninety-nine percent of people have no idea about Guanxian Ancient City. We decided to stay in Guanxian Ancient City during the Spring Festival for a self-driving trip around Wenchuan, and then we made Dujiangyan our transit point. Known as 'Little Chengdu', Guanxian was established between 386 and 557 AD as a fortress on the way to Songmao. It has always been a strategic town and is known as 'the world's number one pass'. In the tenth year of the Dazhong era of the Tang Dynasty (856 AD), the military governor of Jiannan, Bo Mingzhong, built the Yulei Pass in the west of the city to resist the Tubo. Today's Guanxian Ancient City gives me the first impression of existing as a tourism commercial complement to Dujiangyan, with the main street, Happiness Road, lacking much of the ancient city feel, and the Water Conservancy Mansion ruins also being a bit of a mess. Relatively interesting is the area around the Ming city wall and West Street. West Street is the starting point of the ancient Guansong Tea Horse Road and still retains the ancient streets built along the mountain. Although West Street is also very commercialized, it at least retains the texture and spatial scale of the ancient city's streets and alleys, and it feels quite nice to stroll around in the early morning. Many people like to see the man-made 'blue tears' of Tianfu Source, but I prefer to enjoy the view of the covered bridge and the sunlit Jincheng Mountain together at sunrise. However, the snow on the mountains behind melts particularly fast; on the first morning, you can still see the snow-capped mountains, but by the same time the next day, you can only see a sparse amount of snow. So, watching the sunlit Jincheng Mountain in Dujiangyan also requires a bit of luck.