Zhenbeibu Western China Film Studio

National 5A Tourist Attraction; Two Ming And Qing Frontier Forts Turned Film Sets · Yinchuan, Ningxia

Two abandoned frontier forts on the gravel plain below the Helan Mountains, saved from collapse by becoming the most productive film location in China. The older fort dates from the Ming, the newer from the Qing, both built of rammed earth to watch the northern approaches to Yinchuan, and both were ruins by the 1960s. The writer Zhang Xianliang, sent to Ningxia during the anti-rightist campaigns and rehabilitated afterwards, bought the lease in 1993 and turned them into a studio with a deliberate philosophy: no reconstruction, no prettifying, keep the broken walls exactly as they are and let films use them. More than a hundred and fifty productions have been shot here, including Red Sorghum, which won the Golden Bear and launched Zhang Yimou and Gong Li, and A Chinese Odyssey, which is quoted endlessly in China. Sets are left standing after shooting, so you walk through a desert town, a Ming street and a wine workshop where famous scenes were filmed, with the mountains behind and dust blowing through.

Zhenbeibu, Xixia District, Yinchuan, Yinchuan, Ningxia, China

Daily; peak season 29 April to 15 October about 8:00-18:00, then 8:30-17:30 to the end of October and about 9:00-17:00 from 1 November to 15 April. One source gives a flat 9:00-17:00 year-round.

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