At the base of the mountain, before the trail begins, a small interpretive area explains the tusi system — the Ming and Qing dynasty's mechanism for governing non-Han frontier territories through hereditary local chieftains. The exhibits are in Chinese with some English captions, but the maps are clear enough to follow without language skills: they show how Bozhou, the Yang family's territory, sat on the boundary between Han administrative China and the unconquered southwest, and why holding it required a fortress of this scale rather than a normal administrative town.
The tusi system lasted in various forms from the Yuan dynasty through the early 20th century. At its peak, hundreds of tusi territories covered what is now Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Hunan. Hailongtun is the most physically dramatic survival of that system anywhere in China — the other two UNESCO-listed tusi sites, in Hunan and Hubei, are less spectacular though more intact. The interpretive exhibits make the case for why the site matters historically, beyond its obvious visual drama.