Longli ancient town

Longli ancient town, located in the south of Jinping County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province. Prof. Chen Keshi and his design team were commissioned to carry out an architectural landscape design of key areas. With the core of building "the ancient city on the paddy field", adhering to the principle of landscape priority, taking the rural scenery as the background, and with the design idea of beautiful environment and harmonious ecology,  8 major areas were mainly built: Liangjiang riverside water landscape area, Longli ancient town protection area, tourism service area, Wumashan cultural park, beautiful countryside, new town public service area, style bar area, new town comprehensive residential area. This design completely restores the architectural style of the Central Plains in the early Ming Dynasty, making Longli ancient town a name card for today's Guizhou tourism.

Longli ancient town is a military castle of the Ming Dynasty on the eastern edge of Guizhou. Because it was formed in the early Ming Dynasty by the troops from the Central Plains to the local counterinsurgency, it became an isolated island of local Han architecture for more than 600 years. After the investigation, Prof. Chen Keshi and his team carefully restored the Longli building following the Central Plains language system in the early Ming Dynasty, especially made a lot of efforts to make the local governors understand why to build a traditional Han village in the Miao area.


Longli is an ancient town with a long history. It integrates Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, military and political culture. It has a complete reservation both inside and outside the city. It also has a 600-year history of wood business culture running through Longli. The residents of Longli are the descendants of the standing army of Chu Wang garrison in the Ming Dynasty. Most of them come from Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Fujian, and other provinces. They are all Han nationality and seldom intermarry with local ethnic minorities. They have obvious cultural characteristics of Han nationality. The local dwellings are well built and the street layout is ingenious. Up to now, the military defense system and residential buildings of Ming and Qing Dynasties are completely preserved. These cultural landscapes are of great value for exploring the secrets of history and developing modern tourism.

This area is an open Intermountain basin. The Longxi river passes northwards through the basin from the west, with thousands of hectares of fertile fields, crisscross fiber roads, surrounded by mountains and covered by pleasant shade.

Therefore, based on the unique historical and cultural resources of Longli, the design team, starting from the concept of urban humanism, has determined three design concepts: the impression of Han culture island in Hongwu year, the poetic garden city concept and the ecological town. The magnificent ancient town of Longli was built in 1386, the 19th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty. It was built by garrisoning troops. The cultural significance of the Han nationality is far greater than the military culture. However, no matter the military background or the Han nationality, the history of Longli is rare in the world. Longli's architecture is the comprehensive embodiment of Wang Changling's frontier poetry, capital architecture and the wisdom of local workers. Although after hundreds of years of natural erosion and fire disaster, the whole ancient town is well preserved, which is one of the best-preserved ancient towns in the south plateau of China.
In the design process, the design team relying on the 600-year-old town of Longli, vigorously promotes the cultural tradition of the Han nationality, shapes the environmental image with beautiful rural landscape and forest park as the theme, advocates the natural aesthetics, organically combines the green ecology and urban development, and builds a modern rural town. Actively integrate economic vitality to local industry, expand the eco-tourism industry chain, pay attention to provide pleasant living environment while developing an eco-industry, realize the integration of industry and physical space and achieve a benign and interactive urban environment. In Longli ancient town's new area, a new tourism town with the theme of modern Han nationality style will be built to form a tourism brand integrating tourism, commerce, and culture in Southeast Guizhou.

Under current scale expansion, the existing ancient walls and gates will be preserved, and the new town walls will be expanded to the periphery. New walls will be built around the town, which is set as the route around the city. Along the walls, you can see the inside and outside landscape of Longli ancient town. In addition, its suitable height and the sloping garden landscape close to the inner side of the wall are the perfect integrating the human landscape and natural landscape and improving the overall landscape environment. In the design of the new wall, the perimeter of the wall is 1360m, and the height is 3.5 to 5.5 m, which is completely built according to the traditional technique. Moat and 4 bridges are set around. There are 4 gates and 3 turrets in the city wall, among the south gate, the north gate and the west gate are all equipped with small space outside the gates, the east gate is set in the form of suspension bridge, and the inside of the city wall is equipped with steps that can be up and down to provide a more humanized walking system.