Great walls built to repel the “other’’ have recently become part of the global conversation, sparked by politics and popular culture. The global hit “Game of Thrones” has an ice wall that separates so-called civilization from an army of the undead. President-elect Donald J. Trump, who promised to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, has compared his plan to the Chinese Great Wall. He even said it would be named the “Great Wall of Trump.”

This month, theaters in China began showing “The Great Wall,” a fantasy action movie starring Matt Damon, directed by Zhang Yimou and produced by Chinese and American companies. The film’s conceit is that the wall was built to keep out monsters. Mr. Zhang, China’s most famous director, shot scenes in the deserts of Gansu Province, where Jiayuguan is, though not at the fort itself.

“We definitely did make the connection with Gansu Province as the terminus, or start, of the Silk Road and the perfect area for our heroes to enter China,” said Peter Loehr, a producer.

I visited Jiayuguan while on a recent high-speed train trip across Gansu. I had been here once before, as a backpacker in 1999, when few tourists came. My father had passed by nearly a half-century earlier.

The high-speed rail route opened in 2014 and follows the old Silk Road along the barren Hexi Corridor, a strip of high plains that runs between two mountain ranges and that historically bridged the ethnic Han regions of interior China to the western edge of the empire.

Jiayuguan is already benefiting from the arrival of the high-speed railway and growing interest in the Great Wall. During China’s big October holiday week, Jiayuguan received 442,800 visitors, a 22 percent increase over the same time last year, according to the China National Tourism Administration.