The old town of Xizhou
The old town of Xizhou stands 17 km north of Dali Old Town. Already in the age when the six Zhao and the "He Man" groups coexisted, Xizhou was a Bai settlement: under the Sui it was called "Shicheng," and in the Tang–Song era it served as the Nanzhao and Dali Kingdom's "Dalicheng." Local commerce flourished late in the Qing and early Republic, and most of the surviving buildings date from then, with further construction into the Republican period — the Zhao family compound of the late Qing, the Yan compound of 1920, and the Yang and Dong compounds of 1948 among them.
"Three bays and a screen wall; four courts and five skylights"
The Xizhou complex embodies the classic Bai courtyard layouts: the sanfang yi zhaobi ("three building wings and one screen wall") and the sihe wu tianjing ("four enclosures with five skywells"). These houses are rich with carved beams, layered bracket sets and upturned eaves, and their gate towers, screen walls and gable murals blaze with decoration — a vivid display of Bai architectural genius and artistry. In modern times a Sino-Western fusion crept in, earning Xizhou the title of a great legacy in China's architectural history. The best known compounds are the Yang Pinxiang residence, the Yan family mansion and the Hou family compound.
On June 25, 2001, the State Council inscribed the Xizhou Bai ancient building complex as a key national protected cultural relic (5th batch, Ming–Qing architecture).
