Multi - Ethnic Pattern And The Formation Of Ganningqing Town 's Form (1368-1911)

The development of the ancient city building had reached a peak during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and it soon welcomed an end of it. At this time, city building had developed its specific features under the impact of political and economic conditions. However, due to the country’s vast area and versatile geographical conditions, the political and economic environments varied a lot from place to place, and therefore led to a diversity of city forms around the country. Urged by the need of politics, economy and transport,the Gansu-Ningxia-Qinghai region had, during this time, both initiated and rebuilt numbers of cities. These cities had demonstrated their own rules from the aspects of time and space.Another feature of city building in Ming and Qing dynasties is covering city walls with bricks. From the dimension of time, the first brick-cover activity in such a large scale appeared in this time. But from the dimension of space,the types and percentages of the brick-cover city walls in the Gansu-Ningxia-Qinghai region in Ming and Qing is not clear. This thesis is aimed at analyzing this situation from the angle of space.In Ming dynasty, Gansu-Ningxia-Qinghai region was located at the Northwest border of the empire, where the administration units included Weisuo, Fu, and Xian. In the following Qing dynasty, as the political power proceeded into the west of the state and Weisuo were relinquished, the situation of administration units had then welcome a new era. As a result, both of the inner of outer landscapes of cities were changed, and acknowledging this fact provides possible access to investigate the development of city building in Ming and Qing dynasty. In addition, Gansu-Ningxia-Qinghai region had long been habitats for multiple nationalities, and had seen frequent interactions between different ethnics. The inner and outer landscapes had, to some degree, been influenced by daily economic and cultural exchanges or even wars. Hence, the city building within the Gansu-Ningxia-Qinghai region became unique due to the complexity of ethnics. This thesis attempts to locate the regional features of this area, explore the changing and developing process of city building, and give elementary analysis of this phenomenon.