Tusi Sites
UNESCO World Heritage Site in China
The Tusi Sites (Chinese: 土司遗址; pinyin: Tǔsī Yízhǐ) refer to the three ancient Tusi sites in China that were designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site on July 3, 2015. It is the 48th World Heritage Site in China. These sites are located in the mountains of Southwest China and exemplify the unique tusi governance system that survived the 13th through the 20th centuries.
Background
The tusi were hereditary tribal leaders that were appointed as officials by the imperial government in China during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. It was a political system adopted by Chinese emperors to govern ethnic minority regions in south-central and southwest China, and the granted many ethnic groups in China some degree of political autonomy. The tusi system was used for a thousand years.
Description
The world heritage site is composed of three separate sites that combine to represent the tusi system:
Laosicheng was the capital of the Peng Tusi from 1135 to 1724, and is the largest and best-preserved of the ancient Tusi cities. The Peng Tusi governed an area of mainly Tujia people and were in the upper ranks of the Tusi system, governing a large territory.
The Hailongtun Fortress was established during the Song dynasty in 1257 and was a stronghold of the Chiefdom of Bozhou before it was surrendered in 1601. Similar to the Peng Tusi in Laosicheng, the Chiefdom of Bozhou were high-ranking tusi and governed a large territory, where Gelao people and Miao people lived.
The public source identifies “Tusi Sites” as uNESCO World Heritage Site in China. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tusi, Sites and UNESCO.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19852428. Authority coordinates are 28.999, 109.967. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2015, 1135, 1724 and 1257.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tusi Sites” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.