Legend of Meng Jiangnv

The legend of Meng Jiangnv is one of China's four great folk love legends, telling how Meng Jiangnv journeyed a thousand li to find her husband and wept the Great Wall down. The tale is told in many versions from Songjiang in the south to Shanhaiguan in the north, and because Shanhaiguan stands at the eastern end of the Wall with the Temple of the Chaste Woman (Meng Jiangnv Temple) on Phoenix Hill just east of the city, it became the legend's heartland. In 2008 the legend was inscribed onto the first national ICH list as an expanded item, filed by the Shanhaiguan District Cultural Centre.

Around Shanhaiguan the legend is handed down through temples, steles, folk songs, opera and seasonal customs. The Meng Jiangnv Temple predates the Song dynasty, and its famous palindrome couplet about "seas that rise and fall" is widely known; each year on the eighteenth day of the fourth lunar month the Meng Jiangnv Temple Fair draws crowds to mourn and perform.

In 2006 Shanhaiguan was named the "Hometown of Chinese Meng Jiangnv Culture" by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Folklore Society, which also established a research centre there. The legend carries a collective memory of fidelity, corvée labour and suffering, and is a key source for the study of Chinese folk literature and Great-Wall culture.

The Meng Jiangnv Temple on Phoenix Hill east of Shanhaiguan is the chief place to encounter the legend, with related displays across the Shanhaiguan scenic area.