Liping Qiaojie Old Street 黎平翘街

About Liping Qiaojie Old Street

The street is high at both ends and low in the middle, so that it looks like a carrying pole tilted up at either end, and that is where the name Qiaojie comes from. Merchants gathered here in the Ming and Qing periods and trade was busy, and the county describes the surviving Qing building group as relatively well preserved. Ranks of fire gables and courtyard houses stand along it, with upswept corners, fine painted work on the gable walls and plainly patterned door and window joinery; the roadway is laid with stone slabs and cobbles. Named side lanes off it include Majia Lane, Yaojia Lane, Zhangjia Lane, Shuangjing Street and Zuosuopo, cobbled and linked by flights of stone steps. The quarter has been designated a China Historic and Cultural Street, a national AAAA scenic area, a provincial historic and cultural quarter and a provincial tourism and leisure quarter.

The Liping Conference site stands within that Ming and Qing building group. The house was first built in the Jiaqing reign of the Qing as the Hu family residence, covers a site of about 800 square metres, carries fire gables on all sides over a timber frame in imitation of the Huizhou manner, and is laid out as one shop, two dwellings and three rear courtyards in three depths separated by fire walls and rising from front to back: a shop at the front, the meeting room and the offices-cum-bedrooms of Zhou Enlai and Zhu De behind it, and a garden at the back. The meeting held here adopted, on Mao Zedong's proposal and after heated argument, the Politburo Decision on Strategic Policy, which abandoned the plan to join the Second and Sixth Army Groups in north-western Hunan and turned the march towards northern Guizhou. Liping County lists the conference site as a national key protected unit and a national patriotic-education base for young people.

What to look for

• The Liping Conference site itself: a Qing shop-house in three depths, where the second depth holds the meeting room and the rooms used as offices and bedrooms by Zhou Enlai and Zhu De.
• The shop-trade inscriptions written on the street-facing window walls of the conference building, naming imported and Beijing goods, wines, silks and cloth, and pots and porcelain.
• The Liping Conference Memorial Hall opposite the site, built in imitation Huizhou style with an entrance hall and four unit galleries in about 2,000 square metres of display space, re-displayed in 2017 and opened in August 2018; a copy of the Politburo Decision on Strategic Policy is among what it shows.
• The Lianghu Guildhall on the street, which the county lists as a provincial-level protected cultural relic unit.
• The other revolutionary sites around the street, among them the Gospel Hall with Bogu's lodging, the former Red Army cadre convalescent company, the former Red Army instruction division headquarters, the former Soviet State Bank and Red Army Square.

Location & getting there

Getting to Liping Qiaojie Old Street

Identify the main visitor approach and any separately managed houses, museums or performances. Ask before entering residential spaces or photographing residents.

• Search for 黎平翘街 with 黔东南苗族侗族自治州 and 黎平县.