This is one of my personal favorite WHS. However, even for visitors from our own country, its history remains quite unfamiliar, and the site itself is not among the more popular tourist destinations. That’s why I’d love to share a bit about my experience here.

In October 2023, just before the first snow, I visited this site with my family during a long self-driving trip along the China–North Korea border.

The different parts of the site are scattered around the outskirts of Ji'an, a lively small town with a large ethnic Korean population. It’s not easy to get there by public transportation, so having or renting a car really helped.

Before entering the site itself, we first visited the Ji’an Museum in the town. It provides a great introduction to the history of the Goguryeo Kingdom and displays exquisite artifacts excavated from the site. My personal favorites were the horse ornaments, which had a very unique and striking style. The whole museum can be visited in about an hour, and I highly recommend stopping by before heading to the heritage site.

After that, we drove to Wandu Mountain City, located in the mountains, featuring the remains of city walls, gates, and palace foundations. It was late autumn, and the mountains were absolutely breathtaking with vibrant colors—locals call this rich autumn landscape five-Colored Mountain. We first walked to the palace site, where only the foundation remains are still visible, right next to a cornfield tended by local farmers. Then we hiked further up the hillside to get a panoramic view of the tomb clusters below.

We walked almost every path inside the scenic area, which took us about three to four hours. It was raining, and much colder than we expected—we were nearly frozen by the end of it.

Our next stop was the Tomb of the General, the best-preserved of all Goguryeo royal tombs. It’s massive and awe-inspiring. You can get a sense of its scale in the photos we took!

The last site we visited that day was the Gwanggaeto Stele, which might be the largest inscribed stone stele in China. It records the founding myth of the Goguryeo Kingdom, and has been a key subject of scholarly research in Northeast Asian history for over a century. Though it was erected in the 5th century, most of the characters remain remarkably legible. I even wanted to try reading some of them, but unfortunately I was cold, starving, and exhausted by that point, so we had to leave in a hurry.

We spent about half an hour at both the tomb and the stele for each.

Due to the covid, we weren’t able to visit the Nobles’ Cemetery at Yushan, which was a real pity.