The Zhili governor-general's office in Baoding was the seat of the official who governed the province around the capital in the Qing dynasty. Baoding became the provincial capital in 1669, and the post of governor-general was created in 1724; Li Hongzhang held it from 1870. The surviving yamen compound, with its courts and halls, is a national key cultural relic and one of the few provincial government buildings of the period still standing.
Baoding became the capital of Zhili in 1669 and kept the office of the governor-general, the first of the Qing empire's eight great governorships. The surviving yamen on West Street shows how a province was administered, and the city lost the rank within a century of the empire's fall.