Jincheng Ancient Town

Jincheng Ancient Town in Kunming is located in Jincheng Town, Jinning County, on the southeast bank of Dianchi Lake. It is surrounded by mountains on three sides and a hilly plain on the other side. Today, Jincheng Town in Jinning County is the capital of the ancient Dian Kingdom and the birthplace and center of Dian culture. Jincheng Ancient Town has a special status in the history of architecture and urban construction. The urban construction layout of the Ming and Qing dynasties still preserved covers an area of more than 600,000 square meters. It consists of eight streets in the old city, including Shangxi Street, Xiaxi Street, and Guanjing Street. Most of the residential courtyards preserved between the streets and alleys are of "dry column type" and "one seal" structure, adopting the layout of "three rooms and four ears" and "two rooms and two ears" quadrangle courtyards. Lifting beams and wearing bucket-style roof trusses, double eaves and Xieshan style combination, carved lattice doors and windows, carved dragons and phoenixes, flowers and trees reliefs, exquisite and varied, and highly praised by Chinese and foreign experts. In almost all the houses in the ancient town, there is an ancient well, which is called "private well" by the locals. This well is not dug in the courtyard of the courtyard, but is located next to the kitchen stove, which is very convenient for drawing water. In contrast to the private wells, there are also some wells scattered along the street outside the house, which are called "official wells", hence the name of Guanjing Street. These ancient wells, without exception, have different characteristics from other places. One is that the wellhead is small, only about twenty centimeters; the other is that there is a symmetrical hole on both sides of the well fence. According to the local old man, the wellhead is small to prevent people from throwing into the well and the small holes on both sides of the well fence are for locking the well cover to prevent thieves and gangsters from being poisoned!