The Jingzhou city walls are among the most complete and best-preserved ancient defensive circuits in China. What you walk around today is a seventeenth-century Qing dynasty reconstruction of earlier walls, but the scale is formidable: nine metres high, ten metres thick at the base, circling the old city for ten kilometres with intact watchtowers at intervals and nine original gates still standing. The rampart path that runs along the outside of the walls makes a good two-hour circuit with views over the moat and the surrounding Jianghan Plain.
The walls enclose the old core of what was once Ying, the Chu capital, and several of the original Chu city sites lie within or just outside the modern wall circuit — though most are now beneath residential and agricultural land. The interior of the walled city is still recognisably historic, with a different scale and texture from the modern city that has grown up outside. The walk is most pleasant in the early morning before the heat sets in, or in the late afternoon when residents use the rampart paths for exercise.