Píngyuè

Pingyue is a walled town on the eastern approaches to the Guizhou plateau, where the road from Huguang passes among hills and gorges. The Ming placed a garrison here in 1381 and made it a guard the following year. Its soldiers and their families cultivated fields in settlements around the town, amid the lands of neighbouring Miao, Yi and Bouyei communities.

The city walls rose above a deep river gorge, making use of the terrain for defence. Travellers passed through on the old relay road; the philosopher Wang Yangming stopped at Pingyue on his journey into exile and wrote of the precipitous Seven Bends road. Under the Qing the military guard became a county in 1672, while the town retained its position on the route between Guizhou and the east.