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Ami County Middle School
Kaiyuan, Yunnan, China
In 1918, Zhou Zenan transformed a local classics society at the Wenchang Palace into Ami County Middle School, introducing modern secondary education to Yunnan Province. Today, at No. 101 People's South Road in Kaiyuan City, the school's former campus stands as a quiet sanctuary of brick, stone, and memory.
Visitors entering the site pass through the Archway Gate, built in 1918. This structure blends European Baroque design with Chinese folk motifs. On its facade, stone-carved lions play with a silk ball under a single-slope roof of cool blue clay tiles. Splayed screen walls of rough blue bricks flank the entrance. Above, a central stone block bears the school's original name, carved in elegant calligraphy by the scholar Chen Rongchang.
Beyond the gate stands the Jiutian Pavilion. Originally constructed in 1728 as the Kuixing Pavilion, this three-story palace-style structure rises twenty meters high. Its triple-eaved hip-and-gable roofs once sheltered the school's very first classrooms. Within these timber-framed walls, history shifted. In 1935, a teacher named Shi Jie used his classroom to spread Marxist thought and organize anti-Japanese student groups, reviving underground operations.
Nearby, an eighty-four-square-meter Qing Dynasty courtyard tells a story of preservation. Relocated here in 2007 to escape a coal mine expansion, the compound features a traditional three-beam, flush-gabled roof. It houses the Xihe Calligraphy and Painting Academy, where the scent of brushed ink fills the air.
Now recognized as a provincial revolutionary relic, the campus reopened in February 2024 as a public cultural space. On the front plaza, residents gather for Tai Chi and evening movies, keeping the legacy of this historic ground alive.