The command office and the examination tower都指挥使司与甲秀楼

In 1381 the Ming sent Fu Youde, Lan Yu and Mu Ying against the last Yuan forces in Yunnan. The army marched through what is now Guizhou, and once Yunnan fell the problem became keeping it. Its main line of supply and reinforcement was a post road running from Huguang (Hunan) across the Guizhou plateau, through country held by hereditary native chieftains. Zhu Yuanzhang warned Fu Youde that unless those chieftains were brought to heel, "even holding Yunnan, it will be hard to keep."

His answer was military before civil. In 1382 he set up the Guizhou Regional Military Commission, a provincial-level command (its head ranked 2a) that answered to the Right Chief Military Commission in the capital. Along the post road it strung a chain of garrison guards and battalions. The Jiajing-era Guizhou gazetteer counts 18 guards and 2 independent battalions, with 62,273 registered military households. The 2026 exhibition puts the Commission's nominal troop strength at about 103,000, plus about 34,000 more in Huguang guards stationed inside today's Guizhou.

Elsewhere the Ming set up a province's military, civil and judicial offices within a year or two of each other. In Guizhou the gap was three decades. The civil Provincial Administration Commission arrived only in 1413 (永乐十一年) and the Surveillance Commission in 1414, which made Guizhou the thirteenth Ming province. That gap is why one of Guiyang's oldest street names belongs to the army.

洪武十四年（1381），明廷派傅友德、蓝玉、沐英进军云南，扫荡元朝残余势力。大军取道今贵州，云南平定之后，难题变成了如何守住。给云南输送粮饷、增派兵力，主要靠一条从湖广横穿贵州高原的驿道，而沿途都是世袭土司的地盘。朱元璋告诫傅友德：“如霭翠辈不尽服之，虽有云南，亦难守也。”

他的办法是先军后政。洪武十五年（1382）设贵州都指挥使司，这是省一级的军事机构，长官正二品，隶属中央右军都督府。都司沿驿道设置一连串卫所。嘉靖《贵州通志》记载，贵州都司辖18卫、2个千户所，军户62273户。2026年的展厅估算，贵州都司所属卫所原额军士约10.3万人，另有湖广都司驻在今贵州境内的6卫约3.4万人。

明代其他各省的都、布、按三司，设立时间前后相差不过一两年；贵州却相隔了三十年。贵州承宣布政使司迟至永乐十一年（1413）才设，提刑按察使司设于次年，贵州由此成为明代第十三个布政使司。贵阳最古老的路名之一属于军队，原因就在这里。

The Hongzhi-era gazetteer places the Commission's office "in the west-centre of the city, on the site of the Yuan dynasty's Bafan–Shunyuan Pacification and Chief Military Command." In other words, the Ming reused the seat the Yuan had used to govern the region. The gazetteer says it was reworked in 1372 and rebuilt at the end of the Hongwu reign by the commander Jin Zhen.

The site made military sense. The office sat on the west bank of the Guancheng River (贯城河), which cut through the walled city, and a bridge in front of its gate became 都司桥, the Command Bridge. Behind it lay the Secondary South Gate (次南门, the Dehua Gate), which gave troops a direct exit to the post road without crossing the city. In the garrison's early decades the city walls were rebuilt with five gates (武胜、朝京、柔远、圣泉、德化) under commanders who included Gu Cheng and Ma Ye.

Ma Ye figures in the best-known story of the period. According to Tian Rucheng's sixteenth-century account, later copied into the official History of Ming, he had She Xiang, the Yi regent of the Shuixi chieftaincy, stripped and flogged in the hope of provoking a revolt that would justify direct rule. She Xiang did not rise. She took her complaint to Nanjing, Zhu Yuanzhang recalled Ma Ye, and she opened the Longchang Nine Posts road across her territory in return. Several historians regard the flogging episode as embellished, since early Ming records do not mention it. The Nine Posts road itself is real.

弘治《贵州图经新志》记载，都司衙署“在治城中西，即元八番顺元等处都元帅府。洪武五年改建，洪武末，都指挥金镇重建。”也就是说，明朝沿用了元朝经略此地的旧衙署。

选址有军事上的道理。衙署在贯城河西岸，这条河当时穿城而过，衙门前跨河的桥便叫都司桥。衙署背后是次南门（德化门），军队出城可以直上驿道，不必穿越城区。卫所初设的几十年里，贵阳城墙在顾成、马晔等将领任内重修，开武胜、朝京、柔远、圣泉、德化五门。

马晔也是这一时期最著名故事的主角。据明人田汝成《炎徼纪闻》（后被清修《明史》采入），马晔想激起民变、借机改土归流，竟将水西彝族女土司奢香裸挞。奢香没有起兵，而是进京申诉，朱元璋召回马晔，奢香则开辟龙场九驿作为回报。王世贞、方国瑜等学者指出明初文献并无此事记载，认为细节多出于演义；龙场九驿本身则确有其事。

The Qing dismantled the Ming garrison command. Its office was reused as the yamen of Xingui and Guizhu counties, and the street lost its military role and became an ordinary administrative quarter. The name held anyway. By the mid-Qing the Daoguang gazetteer lists 都司桥街 among the streets of the south-west inner city. In the Republican era it was renamed 都市路 ("city road"), and in 1981 the Guiyang government restored 都司路. The name has outlived the institution by centuries, and local historians argue it is older than the name Guiyang itself. It also breaks the city's usual scheme of naming streets by direction from the Da Shizi crossroads.

清朝裁撤了明代的都司卫所体系。原都司衙署改作新贵县、贵筑县衙署，这条路的军事功能随之淡去，成了寻常的衙署街区。路名却留了下来：道光《贵阳府志》把“都司桥街”列为内城西南的街巷之一。民国时改称“都市路”，1981年贵阳市人民政府考证沿革后正式恢复“都司路”。这个路名比它所纪念的机构多存在了几百年，本地学者认为它甚至早于“贵阳”这个名字；它也打破了贵阳以大十字为中心、按东西南北命名街道的惯例。

The Guancheng River had long been covered over. As part of a river-revival project, the 374-metre Bo'ai Road stretch was uncovered in February 2026, and an exhibition hall on the Commission was completed on 3 February, built directly over the running water beside Dusi Road near the original office site. The Nanming stretch of the river opened to the public on 30 April 2026.

The hall is small (280 m²) and modern, designed after Ming yamen forms. Its seven sections run from the Ming garrison system to the naming of Dusi Road. The centrepiece is a relief model of the Ming city, reconstructed from the city plan (贵州省城图) in the Wanli-era Guizhou gazetteer, with the Guancheng and Nanming rivers in blue.

贯城河曾长期被加盖掩埋。在贯城河综合治理提升项目中，374米长的博爱路段于2026年2月揭盖复涌；2月3日，贵州都指挥使司展厅布展完成。展厅就建在都司路旁的河道之上，靠近明代都司原址，脚下即是贯城河活水。贯城河南明段于2026年4月30日正式对外开放。

展厅面积280平方米，是以明代官署形制为蓝本的新建筑，分“黔中屏翰”“黔疆锁钥”“都司印记”“兵法纵横”“文经武略”“雄城始成”“玉带黔韵”七个部分，从明代卫所制度讲到都司路得名。展厅中央是明代贵阳城全景沙盘，据万历《贵州通志》中的《贵州省城图》立体复原，两条蓝色水带分别代表贯城河与南明河。

Guizhou became a province in 1413 but had no provincial examination of its own. For over a century its candidates travelled to Kunming to sit the Yunnan exam, a journey one Guizhou official described as steep, disease-ridden and hardest in the summer heat. Only in 1537 did Guizhou hold its own provincial examination. Before then the whole province had produced just 27 metropolitan graduates (jinshi).

Sixty years later Governor Jiang Dongzhi paid, partly out of his own salary, for a stone embankment from the south bank of the Nanming River to a large rock in midstream. He had stones piled on it in the shape of a leaping giant turtle (鳌), a pun on the saying 独占鳌头, "to stand alone on the turtle's head." The phrase meant taking first place in the palace examination, because the top graduate stood on the turtle carved on the palace steps. On the rock he planned a tower named 甲秀, "excellence of the first rank," which was a wish that Guizhou would start sending its scholars to the top of the examination lists.

Jiang never saw it finished. In 1599 troops he sent against the rebel Yang Yinglong of Bozhou were destroyed at Feilianbao, and he was impeached, stripped of office and sent home, where he died. He left money for the tower, and it was completed around 1606 under his successor Guo Zizhang. The name 甲秀楼 first appears in Guo's gazetteer 《黔记》, so it may have been Guo, not Jiang, who named it.

贵州于永乐十一年（1413）建省，却长期没有自己的乡试。一百多年间，贵州考生要远赴昆明参加云南乡试，思南人田秋在奏疏中写道：“盛夏难行，山路险峻，瘴毒浸淫，生孺赴试，其苦最极。”直到嘉靖十六年（1537），贵州才单独开科。此前160余年，全省考中进士的只有27人。

六十年后，巡抚江东之捐出部分俸银，从南明河南岸筑堤直抵河心一块巨石，又在石上堆石成巨鳌腾跃之形，取“独占鳌头”之意。这个成语指殿试夺魁，因为状元要站在宫殿台阶上雕刻的鳌头上迎榜。江东之还打算在石上建楼，名为“甲秀”，取“科甲挺秀”之意，盼的是贵州士子从此名列前茅。

江东之没能看到楼建成。万历二十七年（1599），他派兵征讨播州杨应龙，在飞练堡全军覆没，随即被弹劾罢官、黜为平民，回乡后愤恨而卒。他离任时留下了建楼的银两，楼在继任巡抚郭子章任内于1606年前后落成。“甲秀楼”三字最早见于郭子章所著《黔记》，楼名很可能出自郭子章，而非江东之。

The pavilion's history is mostly a list of rebuildings. The building you see is from 1909, and the base under it was rebuilt in modern materials. Every governor who rebuilt the pavilion chose to put it back on the same rock.

甲秀楼的历史，主要是一连串的重建。眼前的楼阁建于1909年，楼基用的是现代材料。历任重建的官员，都选择把它建回同一块石头上。

The name board. The three characters 甲秀楼 were written in the Xuantong years by Xie Shiqin, who also opened Guiyang's first photo studio. The board was lost in the Cultural Revolution. 秀 and 楼 were later recovered, and 甲 was rewritten from old photographs.

The long couplet. The couplet on the front pillars, by the late-Qing Guiyang scholar Liu Yushan (刘玉山, given name 蕴良), runs to 206 characters. It is usually ranked with the long couplets of Daguan Tower in Kunming and Wangjiang Tower in Chengdu.

The missing iron pillars. Two iron columns once stood by the west gate. They were cast from confiscated weapons on the orders of the Qing viceroys Ortai (1732) and Lebao (1797) after they put down uprisings in the province, and they were meant as trophies. They were removed in 1952 and are now in the Guizhou Provincial Museum.

The vanished pool. Below the pavilion there was once a deep eddy, 涵碧潭, named from a line by Zhu Xi. The traveller Xu Xiake noted it in 1638 as the place where the river "deepens and does not flow." The river's course has since changed and the eddy is gone, but the small Hanbi Pavilion above it still carries the name.

楼额。“甲秀楼”三字为宣统年间贵阳人谢石琴所书，他也是贵阳第一家照相馆的创办人。楼额在十年动乱中遗失，后来寻回“秀”“楼”二字，“甲”字依旧照片补写。

长联。楼前柱上的长联出自清末贵阳楹联名家刘玉山（名蕴良）之手，长206字，常与昆明大观楼长联、成都望江楼长联并称。

不见了的铁柱。楼西门外原有两根铁柱，分别由云贵总督鄂尔泰（雍正十年，1732）和勒保（嘉庆二年，1797）在镇压当地起事后用收缴的兵器铸成，用以记功。1952年拆除，今藏贵州省博物馆。

消失的深潭。楼下原有深潭，名“涵碧潭”，取朱熹“一水方涵碧，千林已变红”之句。徐霞客1638年到此，记下“至此渊而不流，即涵碧潭也”。河道改变后深潭已失，只有潭上的涵碧亭还留着这个名字。

The embankment Jiang Dongzhi built in 1598 is the ancestor of the bridge. It was first called Jiang's Dike (江公堤), then the South Dike in the early Qing, and finally Fuyu, "Floating Jade," after its white stone. It had nine arches, which framed a scene locals called "nine eyes lighting the sandbar" when an islet, Fangdu Isle, still lay downstream. The islet was gone by the Republican era, and the two northern arches were later filled in under a road. The bridge is now 92 m long and 7 m wide, the longest old bridge in central Guiyang, and floods have never taken it. Look at it from the bank: the arches grow larger from north to south, and the deck bends in a slight S.

浮玉桥的前身就是江东之1598年所筑的堤，初名“江公堤”，清初称“南堤”，后来因桥用白绵石砌成，改称浮玉桥，与桥下鳌矶合成“鳌矶浮玉”一景。桥原有九孔，当年下游还有芳杜洲，“九眼照沙洲”是一方胜景。民国时芳杜洲已消失，后来北端两孔又被填入路基。今桥长92米、宽7米，是贵阳城区最长的古桥，从未被洪水冲毁。从岸边看：桥孔自北向南逐渐增大，桥面呈微微的S形。

The garden on the south bank is older than the pavilion. It began as a Ming Buddhist retreat called the South Hermitage (南庵). Wang Yangming visited it during his years in Guizhou and wrote the poems 《南庵次韵》 around 1509. The site then passed through several identities. In the Zhengde years a regional inspector turned it into a shrine to Zhuge Liang. In 1655 it became a Guanyin temple, and in the Daoguang years it was renamed Shuiyue Temple. In 1828 the governor-general Ruan Yuan wrote the board 翠微, "green mountain haze," for its riverside hall. A primary school moved in during 1940, and most of the temple buildings were pulled down or converted. From 1990 the city restored the Gongnan Tower, the Cuiwei Hall and the Longmen Academy and opened the complex as Cuiwei Garden.

南岸的翠微园比甲秀楼还早。它的前身是明代的佛寺南庵，王阳明谪居贵州期间曾数次游览，约1509年写下《南庵次韵二首》。此后这里几经易主：正德年间巡按御史胡琼改为武侯祠，祭祀诸葛亮；清顺治十二年（1655）改建观音寺；道光年间改称水月寺；道光八年（1828）云贵总督阮元为临河的阁题额“翠微”。1940年甲秀小学迁入，山门、大殿、翠微阁多被拆除或改作他用。1990年起，贵阳市修复拱南阁、翠微阁、龙门书院等建筑，定名翠微园。