The Ancient Government Office (Xian Ya, or County Yamen) is one of the best-preserved magistrate's offices in China — a complete Qing-dynasty administrative complex still furnished with original desks, judicial instruments, ceremonial regalia, and the various rooms through which the machinery of local government passed: courtroom, archive, accounting office, prison cells, and the magistrate's private residence in the rear.
The complex is organized around a central axis in the traditional Chinese administrative style, with a formal ceremonial entrance giving onto a series of increasingly private courtyards. The courtroom at the center, with its judge's bench, the position markers on the floor showing where accusers and accused stood, and the rack of instruments for corporal punishment behind the bench, is particularly vivid.
County yamen like this one administered justice, collected taxes, organized public works, and maintained order — the entire apparatus of the Chinese imperial state at local level. Seeing one this intact gives an unusually concrete sense of how the Qing system actually worked day to day. Included in the combined ticket.