Transportation Guide to the Baoxie Trail

Take Bus No. 21 in Hantai District, Hanzhong, and alight at the final stop: Hedongdian.

Bus No. 102 also serves this route. After reaching Hedongdian Terminal, Shimen is still four kilometres away, and auto-rickshaws are the only means of transport for this stretch.

Stretching south from Baocheng in Hanzhong north to Xiaguguan in Guanzhong, the Baoxie Trail was the most vital passage linking Guanzhong and Hanzhong in ancient times. It is the earliest and largest plank road constructed in Chinese history. From the late Han Dynasty to the Five Dynasties, all military campaigns between the north and the south made use of this trail. During the Chu-Han Contention, Liu Liang adopted Han Xin’s famous stratagem: "Openly repairing the plank road while secretly marching through Chencang". The plank road mentioned here refers precisely to this Baoxie Trail. In the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, tens of thousands of labourers were dispatched to dig a waterway along the Baoxie River for grain shipping, yet the project ended in failure. In the Three Kingdoms Period, Zhuge Liang crossed the Qinling Mountains via this trail during his fifth northern expedition, stationing troops to open up farmland along the Xie River.