Xingcheng: A City inside the Walls

Xingcheng Old City occupies the old urban centre of Xingcheng, within Huludao. Founded in 1428 as Ningyuan, it belonged to the Ming dynasty’s system of fortified garrison towns. Its nearly square outline makes that planning easy to grasp: entrances on four sides connect to streets leading inward.

At the centre, the Bell and Drum Tower stands over four arched passages. A civic landmark is also a way through. Looking along the intersecting streets, it is possible to understand the city as an arrangement of movement rather than simply a wall enclosing monuments.

The wall combines a stone foundation, brick exterior, rough-stone inner face and rammed-earth core. Its foundation in the fifteenth century was followed by major rebuilding in the 1620s, Qing repairs and modern conservation. The monument’s solid outline contains a succession of construction campaigns.

The city’s purpose changed with those campaigns. A Ming garrison became a place on the Qing emperors’ northeastern journeys, and the travelling court ordered further repairs. Military infrastructure acquired a role in imperial travel before becoming protected urban heritage.

The Confucian temple adds another purpose to the town’s plan: honouring Confucius and supporting traditions of learning. Defence, education and public honour occupied the same small urban world.

The streets also contain work that has little to do with a Ming garrison. Xinhua reporters visiting in 2024 described residents chatting outside their homes and workers at sewing machines in small swimwear workshops. Xingcheng’s modern clothing industry has a place inside the old walls. The local past does not stop at the end of imperial history.

A television drama about swimwear entrepreneurs, Cheng Feng Ta Lang, used the old city as a setting. Its filming locations introduced another reason for people to stop in the lanes. A screen story, a working household and a historical monument may share an address, but they carry different dates and purposes. Together they sustain the streets as places of work, residence and remembrance.