Rui'an Fortress 瑞安堡

About Rui'an Fortress

The Lanzhou Morning Post report describes the complex as laid out symmetrically on a north-south axis, built up from enclosed independent courtyards with the main rooms facing south, combining dwelling and defence and built mainly of raw earth, and it calls Ruianbao a representative work of Hexi corridor dwelling architecture. China News Service, in a report of March 2026, describes it as the best-preserved fortified settlement-style building in north-west China and as a distinctive and well-preserved body of vernacular architecture of the Hexi corridor with research value for Hexi dwellings.

The fort was completed in 1938 as the private fortified residence of the local wealthy man Wang Qingyun. Its first gate stands on the axis of the front outer wall, arched, about 10.8 m high and 9.2 m wide, on a stone base with grey-brick facing; its wooden leaves are iron-clad and studded with rivets, and brick plaques above and inside the gate read 瑞安堡 and 瑞安堡落成赠言. The report says the completion inscription was written by the local gentryman and provincial graduate Lu Dianyuan, and that the name 瑞安 was taken because the owner's courtesy name was Ruiting and he held the post of militia regiment commander.

The fort body faces south and measures 92.25 m north to south by 54.6 m east to west, covering more than 5,000 sq m with more than 140 rooms of various sizes, and the report reads the layout as carrying the devices known as 一品当朝 and 凤凰单展翅. China News Service gives the fort site as 5,600 sq m with 2,400 sq m of building.

Inside, the front courtyard is about 50 m wide and 26 m deep, with more than 30 flat-roofed earth-and-timber rooms along the wall: fodder rooms, a mill and stables on the west, and quarters for guards, carters and hired hands on the east. The middle courtyard is about 50 m wide and 13 m deep, a corridor-ringed small quadrangle. A third gate, whose lintel reads 琅嬛福地, leads to the rear courtyard, divided by a five-bay roll-roof hall; the east court holds the ancestral hall and the owner's five bedrooms, while the west court holds a Buddhist hall, a study and a schoolroom, with quarters for the younger generation in the side rooms. Between the ancestral hall and the Buddhist hall stands a single-bay square two-storey pavilion called Shuangxi Lou, also known as the embroidery loft.

The walls carry the fort's defensive works. Besides the gate tower and Xiaoyao Gong — a three-sided half-pavilion with a single-eave hip-and-gable roof set on the wall at the end of the axis, facing the front gate tower, from which the whole of Ruianbao can be seen — there are, among other works, a literary tower, a military tower, a moon-watching pavilion, a lookout, patrol rooms, a horse-running path and a parapet. The wall runs 300 m, is 12 m high, 2.5 m wide at the top and 7 m at the base, and its firing holes are set in pairs that are wide inside and narrow outside.

The report explains the wall's construction by Minqin's climate: annual rainfall there is about 200 mm against more than 2,000 mm of evaporation, so the builders tamped soil in timber formwork in layers, laying a course of red willow branches at intervals along the wall as reinforcement. It also says the architect opened skywells of the kind particular to Huizhou architecture inside the high walls for light and ventilation.

The rooms are furnished to restore the owners' living scenes, with long tables and armchairs in the reception hall, brick kang beds in the side rooms, and, among other household and farm items, grain jars, oil crocks, old steelyards, bronze pots, bellows and farm tools in the kitchens, stores and stable. The report adds that Minqin set up a militia regiment in 1936 with Wang Qingyun as its commander, that 800 workers a day were employed at the height of construction, that the work was finished in 1938 and is said to have cost 100,000 silver dollars, and that Minqin people gave Ruianbao the name 小皇城. Ruianbao was taken into public ownership in the spring of 1951, the local cultural department took it over in 1983, and it was listed as a national key cultural relic in 2006.

China News Service reports that local authorities carried out digitisation of Ruianbao in 2024 and 2025 and completed it after two years.

What to look for

• The arched first gate with its iron-clad, rivet-studded leaves and the brick plaques reading 瑞安堡 and 瑞安堡落成赠言
• The three successive courtyards on the north-south axis, from the front courtyard's fodder rooms, mill and stables to the rear courtyard's ancestral hall, Buddhist hall, study and schoolroom
• The Shuangxi Lou, or embroidery loft, between the ancestral hall and the Buddhist hall
• Xiaoyao Gong on the fort wall at the end of the axis, from which the report says the whole of Ruianbao can be seen
• The defensive works along the wall — among them the literary and military towers, the moon-watching pavilion, lookout, patrol rooms, horse-running path and parapet with its paired firing holes
• The rammed-earth wall with its courses of red willow branches laid in as reinforcement
• The furnished rooms with their long tables and armchairs, brick kang beds and, among other items on display, the old grain jars, oil crocks, steelyards, bronze pots and farm tools on display

Location & getting there

Getting to Rui'an Fortress

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 瑞安堡 with 武威市 and 民勤县.