Dali / Yangjumie (Nanzhao Capital)
Core idea
Walled grid capital set on a defensible corridor between the Cangshan mountains and Erhai lake
Why it matters
Long-lived capital of independent Yunnan kingdoms whose grid survives in modern Dali
Description
Yangjumie, on the site of present-day Dali Old Town, was begun in 764 by King Geluofeng of Nanzhao and became the formal capital in 779 under his successor Yimouxun, superseding the earlier Taihe capital. It was built on the fertile, naturally defensible corridor between the Cangshan mountains to the west and Erhai lake to the east, its walled enceinte stretching north to south and anchoring a defensive chain with the Longkou and Longwei forts guarding the valley's narrows. The city served continuously as a capital, of Nanzhao, several short-lived successors and finally the Dali Kingdom, until the Mongol conquest of 1253, and its chessboard grid persists in the layout of modern Dali.
Significance
Yangjumie was the long-lived capital of independent kingdoms of the south-west for over four centuries, a rare major planned city outside the Sinitic core. It fused Tang-style grid planning with a dramatic mountain-and-lake geomantic siting, and its street grid still shapes the modern town of Dali, giving the plan an unusually direct continuity into the present.
What became of it
Yangjumie (old Dali) became the Nanzhao capital c. 779, laid out on a Chang'an-inspired model; it continued as capital of the successor Dali Kingdom until the Mongol conquest (1253), after which the Nanzhao city was superseded and the surviving walled grid town is a later Ming reconstruction.
Critique
Scholars note that the supposed faithful 'modelled on Chang'an' grid is known mostly from later texts and the Ming rebuild, so the actual Nanzhao-period plan and the degree of Tang emulation remain poorly attested archaeologically.
What shaped it
- The walled-ward (fang) city system (Sui–Tang, c. 6th–9th c.)
- The grid (c. 2500 BCE)
- Fengshui landscape cosmology (Han onward, codified by Song)
- Buddhism (c. 5th c. BCE)