The century-old Tieling Pass.

The century-old Tieling Pass "Under the moonlight, the crows are crying, and the sky is full of frost. The fishermen are sleeping under the maple trees by the river. Outside the city of Suzhou, there is a temple called Hanshan Temple. The bell rings at midnight and reaches the boat." This poem "Maple Bridge Night Mooring" by Zhang Ji made Hanshan Temple and Maple Bridge famous. In fact, Maple Bridge is just a common single-hole stone bridge in the south of the Yangtze River, and the east bank of the bridge extends into the Tieling Pass. The Tieling Pass, which is extended by the Maple Bridge, carries hundreds of years of vicissitudes of history. Suzhou has always been known as "six gates, three passes, and five drum towers". Tieling Pass is one of the three passes. Because it was built to resist the Japanese, it is also called Maple Bridge Enemy Tower. Historical records show that during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the Japanese pirates entered the estuary from Taicang and invaded Suzhou, burning, killing, and looting in Changmen and Maple Bridge. The local government then built this pass tower, "The square is 13 feet wide, 3 feet 6 inches high, and the base is not made of stone. The four doors are made of bricks and three layers are in the middle. The top is covered with tiles, and there are many holes on the side for shooting arrows, stones, guns and cannons." Tieling Pass is easy to defend and difficult to attack. It forms a complete ancient military defense system with the ancient canal and the ancient Maple Bridge in front of the pass. It is an important pass to guard the west of Suzhou. For more than 400 years, Tieling Pass has been damaged and repaired several times. It is currently the only relatively intact anti-Japanese pass tower relic in Suzhou and is a cultural relic protection unit in Jiangsu Province. The four characters "Yu Kou An Min" on the city tower shine under the sun, as if telling the heroic stories of Ren Huan, Yu Dayou and other anti-Japanese generals. Tieling Pass also witnessed the liberation of Suzhou during the War of Liberation and is a patriotic education base. Nowadays, people stand in front of the vicissitudes of Tieling Pass, looking at the ancient canal that has been flowing for thousands of years, and it is also a very meaningful thing to remember the past and remember the sages.