Ji Ming Yi (鸡鸣驿) village is located in Ji Ming Yi county, Hebei province and got its name because of the mountain in the back named Ji Ming Mountain. Ji Ming means roosters crowing. This place once served as an important courier station during the Ming and Qing dynasties and was an important hub for the sending and receiving of official documents from different regions. On the wall there are four corner towers, and there is one gate in the east and in the west. Outside the city is a beacon. The five roads in the city are like the lines of a chessboard and divide the city into 12 blocks of different sizes.

Entering Ji Ming Yi, one will immediately feel like walking into the ancient times, for the old city walls haven’t toppled down after having weathered hundreds of years of history, and the city gate seems quite familiar and records the prosperity of the past of the place. The old courier station is seemingly telling the past stories to the visitors.

Ji Ming Yi was built in the Yuan Dynasty. In 1219, Genghis Khan crusaded to the west and set up a courier road on the path to today’s Xinjiang and the regions beyond and courier stations on it. In 1420 in the Ming dynasty, Ji Ming Yi was expanded to the top first station to enter Beijing for Ding Huo Fu (定货府). In the reign of the Emperor Kangxi of the Qing dynasty, officials were appointed to station in the post to manage the affairs overseen at the site. In 1738 during the Qing Dynasty, the city wall was renovated and built a city dam to the east of the city.

Currently Ji Ming is the best preserved courier station. Ji Ming Yi is also important fortress from Beijing to Zhangjiakou. The shape of the city is square and each side is about 300 meters long. The city walls were built with blue bricks and inside the walls were yellow dirt which had been pressed into hard shapes by special stone tools. The city walls are as high as 15 meters. In the city there are still a few old houses where some people still reside.