Outside the City Gates of Dali Ancient Town 大理古城

If you look at the map of Dali Ancient Town, you would immediately see that the layout of Dali ancient town is very regular. It fact it is a square, this is pretty common in old Chinese cities, maybe it is because it is more in harmony with nature? Anyway, like any old Chinese city there are city walls whose purpose was to protect the people from invaders. In the olden times, raids from neighboring kingdoms were very common and it is only right that the cities defend themselves. It served pretty well until the hordes of Genghis Khan came riding through. The gates weren’t any more special than the other city gates I have seen elsewhere in the country but they are still impressive none the less.

Usually, on each side of the city there would be a gate, obviously to let people in. They were not very large but with the advent of automobiles, these now can handle the width of a car. Fortunately, large parts of the ancient town are off limits to vehicular traffic but it still pays to pay attention where you are walking. I was glad that there is no entrance fee for coming into Dali Ancient Town, doing so would probably be strange since people really live in the old town. Although parts of Dali are not as “old” as I’d like them to be, at least the development here is controlled such that there are no high rises and that the existing buildings are maintained.

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