The Shengjing Pass in Fuyuan County of Qujing City has been the most important passage into Yunnan from the central China ever since the Yuan Dynasty, and thus been called the First Pass into Yunnan. For hundreds of years, it has witnessed the excitement of the local people of Yunnan going into the capital city to take exams and the plaint of the officials from the capital city. The Shengjing Pass is not only a historical witness of the cultural development here, but also a dividing line of the two natural climates in the Yunnan Province and the Guizhou Province. It has been said that the mountain ranges not only divide up Yunnan from Guizhou, but also give them two totally different kinds of climates.

On the grand pass there are not only the torii which divides up the sky, the stone lions which divide up the climate, but also the brook which divides up the earth. It is surprising that the colour of the earth on the one side of the dividing line is different from that on the other side. That is because the cold air in the east coming from the Pacific Ocean has become weaker after going through the Guizhou altiplano; while the warm air in the west coming from the Indian Ocean has also become weaker after passing through the Yunnan Altiplano. Thus the so-called Stationary Front in Kunming has come into being. The Shengjing Pass is located right on the Stationary Front, so it rains much in the east while it is always fine in the west. The boundary torii of the Shengjing Pass is of certain scientific value in the research of the weather in Yunnan and Guizhou.

History

The Shengjing Pass has always been the first important pass from Guizhou into Yunnan for the hundreds of years of the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, troops marched into Yunnan via the Shengjing Pass; the second troop of the Red Army entered into Yunnan in their long march via the Pass in 1936; in the early years of the People’s Republic of China, the great Liberation Army passed the Shengjing Pass to help Yunnan to uprise peacefully. Xu Xiake, a geographer in the Ming Dynasty, had wandered here when searching for the headstream of the Panjiang River. Yang Shengan, an ancient talent, and Lin Zexu, the famous national hero in the Qing Dynasty, had driven the quill here

How to get there

It is 219 kilometers from Kunming to the Shengjing Pass. You can take the passenger cars going to the Pan County of Guizhou Province and get off at the Shengjing Pass