Baozhen Stockade Folk Culture Village

Guang'an sits in the transitional zone between the basin bottom and the marginal areas of the Sichuan Basin, with terrain rising gradually from west to east. It features a subtropical humid monsoon climate characterized by mild temperatures and high humidity. The annual average temperature stands at around 17°C, and the average annual precipitation reaches 1,211 millimeters. Its climate features warm and dry winters and springs, hot and rainy summers, and continuous rainfall in autumn.

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Guang'an boasts an extensive highway network. Both the total mileage and average density of highways within the district exceed the national and Sichuan provincial averages. The Guang'an-Linshui section of the Guang'an-Chongqing Expressway is open to traffic, with all remaining sections fully completed before 2004. It takes just one hour to reach Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport from Guang'an, enabling seamless air travel connections. After the Guang'an-Nanchong segment of the Shanghai-Chengdu Expressway opened to traffic in 2004, the drive from Guang'an to Chengdu takes only 2.5 hours. The planned Nanchong-Chongqing Expressway will run through Wusheng County. Upon its completion, all counties, county-level cities and districts under Guang'an will be linked by expressways, integrating the city into the Chengdu-Chongqing-Shanghai tourism and economic belt.

Three national highways pass through Guang'an: G210, G212 and G329. Four provincial highways traverse the area, including the Shizhu-Nanchong route, alongside two county highways: Yuechi-Wusheng Road and Guang'an-Wusheng Road. Interwoven national, provincial and county highways form a transportation framework known as "Three Horizontal Arteries and Four Vertical Arteries", with railways and highways as its backbone. Nowadays, it takes a maximum of 30 minutes by car from downtown Guang'an to any county or district under its jurisdiction, a well-known local infrastructure achievement dubbed the "Half-Hour Access Project".

Baozhen Stockade is located in Fangjiagou Village, Nonglin Township, Wusheng County. Built against mountain slopes, it adopts Minnan walled stockade architectural styles blended with characteristics of Jiangnan residential buildings. Exquisitely laid out, its layered houses exude classic ancient charm with unique aesthetic appeal. Covering a total area of over 26,000 square meters, the stockade contains eight courtyards and 108 gates. Its enclosing wall stands 6.5 meters high, ranging from 0.4 to 1.5 meters in width and stretching 560 meters in length. Construction of Baozhen Stockade began in the autumn of the Xinhai Year of the Xuantong reign of the Qing Dynasty (1911), marking a history of 93 years to date. The project was divided into two phases spanning more than 40 years: the main stockade was constructed first, followed by the rear stockade.

Climb the only stockade gate to reach the three-story observation tower (with a ground floor plus three upper floors). Gazing into the distance, visitors can still catch glimpses of the once enchanting scenery of green mountains, clear waters and gurgling streams. The 560-meter-long, 1.5-meter-wide passage atop the stockade wall extends in all directions. Slit embrasures for firearms are evenly embedded along the wall, positioned at oblique angles to allow cross-fire coverage of all surrounding targets. Designed to safeguard the stockade’s internal security, these defensive installations carry immense military significance. Houses inside the stockade adopt a through-timber frame structure, with wooden partition walls and rafter-supported roofs. Their beams and panels are carved and painted with vivid patterns of flowers, birds, dragons, phoenixes, cloud motifs and more, each with distinctive coloration and lifelike detail, granting the stockade high archaeological and cultural relic research value. Many of these artworks remain preserved to this day.

The eight courtyards vary widely in size and design, the largest spanning 60 square meters and the smallest only 5 square meters. Each operates as an independent yet interconnected unit, linked by orderly passages that facilitate convenient living—an outstanding masterpiece of ancient stockade architecture. Shaped into squares, polygons, circles and triangles in accordance with Bagua geomantic layout rules of the stockade’s interior, they feature fine craftsmanship and elegant stone carvings. The 108 gates differ in dimension and function, purpose-built without any redundant or cluttered design.

A meticulously decorated opera tower and stage stand between the main and rear stockades, adorned with ornate carved beams and painted rafters, forming the core leisure and entertainment hub for residents of the stockade in ancient times. Kitchens were built on both sides, alongside a rear garden filled with exotic flowers and rare herbs. Complete living and service facilities include natural spring wells, fire ponds, dining halls, storage warehouses and restrooms. A stone stele stands on the left side, bearing fluid, finely engraved bold calligraphy. Its inscription records the full construction story of the stockade in great detail and remains perfectly intact, serving as an invaluable historical document for researching the site with exceptional cultural relic value.

Duan Family Courtyard, covering approximately 20,000 square meters, forms a vital component of Baozhen Stockade. In its prime, it featured three main entrance gates, three opera towers and viewing stands, multiple gardens, courtyards, water wells, dining halls, storage facilities and restrooms for comprehensive daily living. Its courtyard ground is paved with 1.5-meter-long stone slabs, and dozens of meters of winding verandas connect the entire compound into a seamless enclosed quadrangle—a pinnacle of ancient courtyard architecture with profound research value. A firearm workshop once operated within the compound, responsible for producing weapons, supplying provisions and maintaining external communications. A multi-story blockhouse constructed from stone slabs rises within the complex, lined with slanted gun slits around its perimeter, easy to defend and hard to attack as a core anti-bandit defensive structure. Complementing this, a high earthen wall stretching several li long encloses Baozhen Stockade, Duan Family Courtyard and the blockhouse into a unified, robust defensive system. Lush shaded green trees nestle the complex amid surrounding green hills, creating a breathtaking landscape. Following conservation and restoration work, Baozhen Stockade stands as an idyllic retreat ideal for archaeological research, leisure, recreation and summer getaways.