Friendship Pass

Friendship Pass, previously known as Zhennan pass, was built during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty. It is one of the ten most famous customs in ancient China. The left side of the Friendship Pass is the Zuobi Mountain Wall and the right is youfu mountain Wall. The Friendship Pass lies in the southwestern part of Pingxiang City in Guangxi and is 18 Kilometers away from Pingxiang City. The 322 National Road passes through the Gate of the Friendship Pass and connects with the Vietnam Highway. It is an important land route to Vietnam and a national Category-1 Port.
 

Pingxiang city has been the border defense area of southwestern Guangxi since ancient times, and friendship pass is the largest and most important barrier between China and Vietnam. the pass is set in a natural gap between a series of steep cliffs and hills wooded with conifers and bamboo. It is a tower-style building, with 22 meters high. the bottom is a thick city wall, the central is a gate of dome and the tower looks very majestic.
 

Friendship Pass is a well-preserved southern border fortress in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Founded in the Han Dynasty, formerly known as the yongming pass, also known as danan pass, jieshou pass. In the Ming dynasty the name changed to the zhennan pass( in English is South Suppressing Pass). In 1965, in order to express the profound friendship between the "comrades and brothers" of the Chinese and Vietnamese peoples, it was renamed Friendship Pass after the approval of the State Council. In 1995, it was identified as the patriotism education base in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. In 1996, it was included in the list of the fourth batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
 

The entire building consists of a base and a gallery-style pavilion, which is 22 meters high. The base construction area is 365.7 square meters, 23 meters long and 15.9 meters wide at the end, with an average height of 10 meters. On the first floor of the gallery, it presents the pictures of Zhennan fort great victory, revolutions in Zhennan guan, and red flag was inserted into zhennan pass. The second floor is the Senior Leaders Meeting Room between China and Vietnam. In the 1950s to 1960s, Premier Zhou Enlai twice met with the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Min here. The third floor is China's nine famous passes exhibition halls.
 

After the founding of New China, Friendship Pass played an important role in political, economic, and cultural exchanges between China and Vietnam. From the middle of the 1960s to the end of the 1970s, China’s aid to the people of Vietnam in resisting foreign aggression was continuously sent from here to Vietnam. In the 1990s, Friendship Pass once again became a bridge between the Chinese people and the Vietnamese people.Friendship Pass, the ancient and majestic gate building, witnessed the history of the Chinese nation’s fearless invasion of foreign countries, liberation and achievements in economic construction. Friendship Pass will always stand in the south of the motherland.

Travel tips

Pingxiang city is 180km away from nanning city, 160km from the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, and the friendship pass lies in18 km southwest of pingxiang city.
 

You can get there by train or by bus. From Nanning to Pingxiang, there are two trains, one is No. 5517 train, the other one is No.8511 train. It’s takes 4-5 hours to arrival pingxiang city. You can also take the long-distance bus to Pingxiang, which runs every hour from 8:00 to 20:30.
 

From Pingxiang to Friendship Pass, there is no fixed shuttle bus, which requires a chartered bus. The journey time is about 40 minutes, and the round trip takes about 40 to 60 yuan.