Xining served for centuries as the primary Chinese military garrison on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, and its history as a frontier garrison is recorded in the Provincial Museum and the City Museum even if the physical evidence is largely gone. A section of the old city wall survives near the central bus station area — a fragment of tamped earth construction that has been incorporated into a small park and labelled as a historical monument.
The garrison history gives Xining a different character from Chinese cities that developed as trading towns or administrative capitals. It was always a place where the Chinese state maintained its presence by force in a region that did not naturally belong to it — a character that persists in the city's modern relationship to Tibetan and Muslim communities.