Ming Post Road and Relay Station System

Timeline

1. 1630Beijing–Nanjing post road · Southern ZhiliIn the 1630s the Ming post road system used Beijing and Nanjing as dual hubs, with main trunk post roads and frontier express courier stations; relay stations were set at set intervals to provide horse changes, food and lodging, and document handovers; the post road between the two capitals remained the main channel for central government orders traveling south.
2. 1631Shaanxi relay district · ShaanxiIn the 1630s, due to surtaxes for the Liaodong and suppression campaigns, the court repeatedly consolidated relay stations and cut horse fodder, leaving relay riders without livelihood; the decay of relay services in Shaanxi and elsewhere and popular uprisings mutually reinforced each other, becoming a concentrated manifestation of the late Ming social crisis in the transport system.
3. 1635Xuanfu · Nine FrontiersIn the 1630s, as the Later Jin (Qing) power rose, the military relays of the Nine Frontiers carried urgent border defense dispatches; express courier stations and beacon towers were added at Xuanfu, Datong, and elsewhere to link up, but late Ming military garrisons' arrears of pay left relay horses and station manpower insufficient, and border communications sometimes fell short.