Bamian Mountain with Its Towering Cliffs
The famous mountains of Xiangxi mostly have their own distinct characteristics. What is the distinguishing feature of Bamian Mountain? In my personal view, its towering cliffs constitute its main feature. Before I had been to Bamian Mountain, I only knew that it was very high and easy to defend but hard to attack. In the past, when Kuomintang troops pursued and suppressed the Xiangxi warlord Qu Bojie's forces, they attacked for more than a month before taking the mountaintop, but Qu Bojie was not destroyed—he broke through the encirclement and retreated. In 1950...
The famous mountains of Xiangxi mostly have their own distinct characteristics. What makes Bamian Mountain special? In my personal view, its towering cliffs constitute its main feature.
Before I had ever been to Bamian Mountain, I only knew that this mountain was very high and easy to defend but hard to attack. In the past, when Kuomintang troops pursued and suppressed the Xiangxi warlord Qu Bojie's forces, they attacked for more than a month before taking the mountain top, but Qu Bojie was not eliminated; instead, he broke through the encirclement and retreated. In January 1950, the Longshan bandit leader Shi Xingzhou, who was entrenched on Bamian Mountain, once gathered with Chen Zixian, commander of the Kuomintang's Provisional First Army, Tuo Gongting, commissioner of the Youyang region, and Qu Boping, commander of the Kuomintang's Provisional Tenth Division, at Yankeluo below Bamian Mountain. They established the Hunan-Hubei-Sichuan-Guizhou Border Area Self-Defense Committee on Bamian Mountain, with Tuo Gongting as chairman and Chen Zixian, Shi Xingzhou, and Qu Boping as vice chairmen. After the meeting, Shi Xingzhou built fortifications on Bamian Mountain, attempting to rely on the mountain's natural defenses to fight the People's Liberation Army to the death. Unexpectedly, as soon as the PLA arrived at Liye, the bandit leaders all fled in different directions. Shi Xingzhou went up Bamian Mountain, and the PLA attacked for only two days before successfully taking the mountain. The myth that Shi Xingzhou boasted of—“Bamian Mountain's natural barrier is indestructible”—was quickly shattered. So just how perilous was Bamian Mountain's terrain? I had long wanted to see it for myself, but twice I reached Liye without being able to go up Bamian Mountain. In late December 2006, I went to Liye for the third time. That day the weather was clear, and in the afternoon the sun was still shining brightly. Led by a township cadre, together with several editors and reporters from Hunan's Politics and Law Channel, I finally made a trip to visit Bamian Mountain. At that time, the road leading to the mountain top was being widened, and the route was all loess road surface, so the car did not drive easily. From the foot of the mountain to the top, the road zigzagged upward in a “之” shape the whole way. Half an hour later, when the car reached the mountainside, I gradually felt how steep the mountain was. The higher we went, the more it felt as if we were driving up into the clouds. At the foot of the Large and Small Yanmen, looking up at the stone walls, they were truly as upright and steep as if split by a knife. This kind of stone wall stretched for dozens of li, standing majestically like a natural Great Wall, and the height of those cliffs was mostly around one to two hundred meters. Only after seeing such terrain with my own eyes did I truly understand why this mountain was easy to defend and hard to attack. It is said that before the road was built, there were only a few small paths up the mountain. When Shi Xingzhou was entrenched on this mountain, he built gate checkpoints at all the mountain paths, blocking the routes up. The PLA also suffered setbacks when it began its attack. Later, it was a local oil maker surnamed Peng who served as a guide and at night led the PLA up a cliff near Yijia Fort, scaling the precipice and reaching the mountain top without anyone knowing. They launched a fierce attack on the bandit soldiers guarding the checkpoint. Under this assault, the bandit soldiers could only flee desperately, and Bamian Mountain was taken by the PLA in one stroke.
From the Large and Small Yanmen upward, after about ten minutes by car, we reached the mountain top. Once on the mountain, we saw a large expanse of flat grassland suddenly appear before us, and we felt as if we had arrived at an Inner Mongolian prairie in the sky. It turned out that the top of Bamian Mountain is entirely made up of gently rolling platform terrain. Only in this winter season, the wild grass on the platform had all withered into a pale yellow-white. If it were summer, the scenery on this mountain would surely be full of green. Bamian Mountain is 1,415 meters high, and its top is very broad: the narrowest east-west width is 2.5 kilometers, the widest is 8 kilometers, and its north-south length reaches 45 kilometers. The entire shape of Bamian Mountain resembles a great ship, as a local ballad attests: “Bamian Mountain is high like a ship, in the great flood it saved the human king; brother and sister were married and sat in the hall, and from the hundred surnames people were passed down.” The terrain of Bamian Mountain slopes from east to west. Going down on the east side is Hunan; going down on the west side is Sichuan. Specifically, the east, south, and north of this mountain all connect with several townships in Longshan, Hunan, and only the west side connects with Youyang and Xiushan, which are now under the jurisdiction of Chongqing Municipality.
Although Bamian Mountain is steep and dangerous on all four sides, once you are on the mountain top, there is almost no terrain to defend. After the PLA took the mountain that year, Shi Xingzhou had deployed men at Swallow Cave to resist. Swallow Cave is located in the southeastern part of Bamian Mountain, and today the site has been developed as a tourist attraction for visitors. Driving from the mountain top, it took more than 20 minutes to reach the mountain hollow near the top of Swallow Cave. After getting out and walking forward several dozen meters, we reached a huge rock on a cliff. Standing beside the huge rock and looking down, we saw that beneath the cliff more than a hundred meters away, four rock caves were lined up in a row. These rock caves are the famous Swallow Cave of Bamian Mountain. Seeing this terrain with my own eyes, I suddenly understood: this cave is below the top of Bamian Mountain, and once the mountain top was taken, how could the cave be held? By going up the mountain from the flank nearby, firepower could directly seal off Swallow Cave. Shi Xingzhou actually knew long ago that this cave could not be defended, so he fled toward Sichuan via Niulu Pass. The small number of men left in Swallow Cave, seeing that the PLA had occupied the mountain top, also withdrew down the mountain overnight by a small side path and scattered like birds and beasts. Therefore, the cave was taken by the PLA the next day, and the bandits inside had all fled. Of course, later none of these bandits escaped the fate of being suppressed. Shi Xingzhou resisted stubbornly to the end, but in the end he too had to surrender.
On Bamian Mountain, there are still many sights to see, such as Ximei Gorge, Wangxiang Terrace, Beizi Rock, Shuche Rock, and Niulu Pass. In the past, most of these were important checkpoints guarded by bandits; today, these places have all become good scenic spots for sightseeing.
After touring Bamian Mountain, I felt I had gained more knowledge, especially a new understanding of why Xiangxi bandits could survive for so long in history and remain uncrushed despite repeated suppressions. In a perilous place like Bamian Mountain, Kuomintang troops had carried out bandit suppression many times, but each time they encountered extremely stubborn resistance and achieved no results. The PLA's bandit suppression was entirely different, because it had the support of the people and was on the side of the prevailing trend. By then the psychology of all the bandits was close to collapse, and at that point, even a natural barrier like Bamian Mountain was of no use. Therefore, it was only reasonable that the PLA successfully captured Bamian Mountain without paying much of a price.