Laosicheng Site 老司城遗址

About Laosicheng Site

Laosicheng Site (老司城遗址) is the ruined capital of the Peng clan chieftains of Yongshun, in Sicheng Village (司城村), Lingxi Town (灵溪镇), Yongshun County (永顺县), in Hunan's Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (湘西土家族苗族自治州). It lies beside the Lingxi River (灵溪河).

Under the tusi (土司) system, imperial dynasties ruled ethnic groups in certain regions by granting hereditary titles to local leaders. Rednet, the Hunan provincial news portal, dates the Yongshun chieftaincy from 910 to 1728 and counts 35 chieftains over 28 generations. The Qing-era Yongshun County Gazetteer records that the chieftain Peng Fushichong (彭福石宠) took office in 1135, in the Southern Song, and moved his seat to Fushi (福石), today's Laosicheng. The chieftaincy was abolished in 1728 under the Qing policy called gaitu guiliu (改土归流); a year later the last chieftain, Peng Zhaohuai (彭肇槐), went back to his clan's ancestral home of Ji'an (吉安) in Jiangxi, and the city was left empty. The name means "Old Sicheng": in the late Ming the seat had moved north to Kesha (颗砂), which became the "New Sicheng".

Hunan's provincial archaeology institute excavated the city with prefecture and county heritage bureaus in 1995, 1996, 1998 and 2010–2011, mapping its functional zones. Most surviving structures date from the Ming. The palace and government-office zones sit at the centre, surrounded by street, chieftain-tomb, religious and garden-villa zones. The palace zone climbs a hillside in a rough oval, higher to the northeast, with a perimeter of 436 m and about 14,000 m² inside; finds include building materials and blue-and-white porcelain. The whole site spreads over 25 km², with a core of more than 250,000 m² laid out with roads and drains.

Laosicheng became a national key protected site in 2001, entered the first list of national archaeological site park projects in 2010, and was named one of China's ten major archaeological discoveries of 2010. On 4 July 2015 the World Heritage Committee, meeting in Bonn, inscribed it with the Tangya (唐崖) and Hailongtun (海龙屯) sites as the Tusi Sites (土司遗址), making it Hunan's first World Cultural Heritage site. The Laosicheng legends (老司城传说) were added to the national intangible heritage list as folk literature in 2021.

What to look for

• The palace zone, an oval hillside enclosure with a 436 m perimeter at the centre of the city
• The Peng clan's ancestral hall and ancestral temple, among the excavated remains
• Tombs of the Yongshun chieftains
• Ancient streets, city walls and memorial arches
• Bronze bells and stone horses found on the site
• The pebble-paved roads, which Rednet describes as strongly Tujia in style

Location & getting there

Getting to Laosicheng Site

• Search for 老司城遗址 with 湘西土家族苗族自治州 and 永顺县.