Guìlǐng

Guiling lay northeast of Hezhou, beneath the ridge from which the county took its name. Roads through this corner of Guangxi approached the neighbouring lands of Hunan and Guangdong. An old county seat had developed here under earlier dynasties, and Guiling remained a county within Hezhou during the Yuan. Its separate county administration disappeared at the end of that dynasty, but the place continued to matter within the territory administered from Hezhou and later He County.

Military organisation gave Guiling a renewed role in the late Ming. During the Wanli reign, a main camp was established at this strategically placed site, with a shoubei officer stationed there and responsibilities extending across thirteen subsidiary camps. A Qing geographical account records that soldiers were subsequently distributed among eight surviving posts, including Guiling, Laicun, Tingxie and Longshui, while the others had been abolished. The former county landscape therefore remained linked to the maintenance of routes and local security. Its history runs from an administrative centre to a garrison network across the hills, where a settlement's importance could outlast the county institution that had once occupied it.