The Castle Lost in Time: Lianxiang Pass (Part 2)

The current Lianxiang Pass city, initially built in the 16th year of Chongzhen (1643), has a stone wall surrounding it, with only one street and four city gates. The street is over 800 meters long from east to west, with a stone arch bridge in the middle, standing with five gate towers. They are Lianxiang Pass Tower, Overstreet Tower, West Gate Tower, Heavy Gate Tower, and Ascending Gate Tower. The 800-meter-long street is divided into upper, middle, and lower streets, which also divide people into different classes. The Overstreet Tower to the City Gate Tower is the upper street, where the government offices are located. There are local patrol inspection offices, supervision and sales offices, and other yamen. The Heavy Gate Tower to the Overstreet Tower is the middle street, a gathering area for salt merchants and wealthy households. This area gathers the largest salt number of Zhang Bing Zhang in Lianxiang Pass, the former provincial assemblyman Liu Junan Liu's salt number; and dozens of large, medium, and small horse shops led by the Xu family. If it is a street day, thousands of horses and merchants stay in Lianxiang Pass, and the business of salt shops, horse shops, blacksmith shops, rice shops, and silver shops is booming. The Heavy Gate Tower to the Ascending Gate Tower is called the lower street, where most of the craftsmen such as silversmiths, blacksmiths, stonemasons, pot makers, leather workers, tailors, painters, and barbers gather. The beggars in the Flower Son Temple outside the Ascending Gate Tower are singing 'Lianhua Luo' and begging in the pass, forming a bizarre prosperity in the pass. According to records, historically, Lianxiang Pass once had seven gate towers, four bridges, and more than 1,400 households and 6,500 people at its peak in the late Qing Dynasty. Every day, the horse teams entering and exiting the pass, driving thousands of horses, transport more than 100,000 catties of salt, tea, and other local products to Kunming every year, and carry back foreign goods such as foreign bowls, foreign oil, foreign yarn, foreign cloth, foreign umbrellas, perfume, foreign alkali, foreign fire, foreign iron, foreign basins, etc., and bring foreign culture back to Lianxiang Pass, transporting it to various places in western Yunnan. After experiencing years and storms, the prosperity of Lianxiang Pass once fell into the long river of history.