Tianshui, in southeastern Gansu Province, is one of those places where history sits in plain sight. Bluestone alleys wind between Ming and Qing dynasty houses, and brick carvings on door lintels carry traces of Fuxi culture stretching back thousands of years. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit each year to walk those streets and absorb the atmosphere. Until early 2025, though, many of them left frustrated. Human guides were scarce, foreign visitors stood in front of the Fuxi Temple plaque without understanding it, and elderly travelers could not keep up with group pace long enough to finish hearing about the brick carvings. The Yingmi M7 neck-mounted automatic sensor tour guide device changed that. Visitors now wear a lightweight player and hear commentary wherever they walk, turning a confusing stroll into a narrated journey through the ancient city’s layers of history.
What was wrong with the old tour setup
Tianshui Ancient City has 12 core points of interest, including Fuxi Temple, the Hu Family Ancient Residences, and Wenchang Pavilion. Each one deserves a detailed explanation. During peak season, daily visitor numbers can exceed 8,000, but the scenic area employs only 15 full-time guides, each leading at most five groups a day. That means most tourists simply wander around on their own without any commentary at all.
A volunteer named Sister Li recalled a May Day holiday when an elderly visitor waited over an hour to hear the legend of Fuxi drawing the hexagrams. His legs gave out before the guide was free. Walk-in visitors had it worse: no guide available, no explanation, just photographs of buildings whose significance they could only guess at.
The alleys themselves added to the difficulty. Streets in the ancient city follow a spider-web layout, and tour groups constantly turned from one alley into another. Guides had to manually switch their equipment between stops, which created gaps and sometimes played the wrong content at the wrong location. On one student group visit, the audio about the Hu family was still playing when the group reached the North and South Houses, prompting a student to ask why they were still hearing about the old Hu family.
Language was another stumbling block. With international visitors from Japan, South Korea, Europe, and North America making up around 12% of total tourists, the limited English and Japanese manual explanations left most overseas guests relying on translation apps. A French couple spent a long time in front of the Hu Family brick carvings trying to decode the meaning of “Fu Lu Shou” with their phone. A staff member eventually gave a rough explanation in simple English, but the couple’s disappointment was obvious.
How Yingmi designed a solution for Tianshui
Rather than drop in standard equipment, Yingmi sent a technical team to stay on-site for five days. They followed tourist groups, recorded common questions, and tested signal strength in deep alleys and inside old houses where coverage was weak. After analyzing the data, they customized a solution built around the M7 neck-mounted automatic sensing tour guide system.
RFID sensing that works automatically
Signal transmitters were installed at all 12 core scenic points and 20 characteristic alleys. When a visitor wearing the M7 comes within 0.5 to 40 meters of a transmitter, the device identifies the location and starts playing the relevant commentary. No button presses, no manual switches. At the Xian Tian Hall of Fuxi Temple, the guide explains the three-meter Fuxi statue and its connection to the origin of Chinese civilization. At the Five Blessings Hall of the Hu Family Ancient Residence, the audio shifts to the symbolism of the “Five Blessings Arrive at the Door” lintel carving and what each character represents.
To handle the complex layout, the transmitters support 16 signal-strength adjustments and work even in deep alleys and dim corners. Each transmitter weighs 27 grams and runs on a lithium battery that lasts about 12 months. Sister Li summed it up: “Tourists just explore on their own now. The guide follows their footsteps and explains as they go. No one asks how to switch the content anymore.”
Eight languages and room for thousands of segments
Yingmi loaded the system with English, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Arabic. Content for each language was adapted by professional interpreters who adjusted phrasing to match the cultural expectations of different audiences. For European and American visitors learning about the Fuxi Eight Trigrams, the commentary draws a parallel to Western astrology as an early attempt to understand universal patterns. For Japanese and Korean visitors at the Hu Family Residences, the Japanese version notes the similarities and differences between Kyoto machiya architecture and northwest Chinese courtyard homes.
Tourists switch languages with a single button press, accompanied by an audio prompt. A French visitor named Pierre, after listening to the Fuxi Temple commentary in his own language, told the staff he could finally understand the story behind the hexagrams and its influence on the I Ching. The overseas visitor complaint rate dropped from 35% to 6% within months.
Battery and durability for a full day of walking
The M7 uses a 2.4GHz high-frequency signal with digital coding to prevent crosstalk, so even when dozens of visitors occupy the same alley, each device plays only its own content. The 800mAh lithium battery supports up to 16 hours of continuous use. One tourist wore his M7 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and still had 30% battery remaining. The device weighs 50 grams and hangs around the neck on a durable body that has held up to daily use in the ancient city for half a year without a single reported failure.
Measurable results after six months
The scenic area surveyed visitors who used the M7 and found that 55% more of them could recall key facts like the cultural significance of Fuxi and the meaning of the Hu Family brick carvings compared with those who had traditional guided tours. Average visit duration increased from 2 hours to 3.8 hours, and the proportion of visitors who covered more than 8 scenic spots jumped from 38% to 78%.
An elderly visitor said that in past group tours he missed most of the details, but with the M7 he could listen to the Fuxi story at his own speed and finally understood why Tianshui is considered one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization. Student groups responded well too; children wearing the devices actively asked about the patterns on the brick carvings and could retell the stories afterward.
On the operations side, manual guide demand dropped by 45%. The scenic area no longer hires seasonal guides, saving roughly 30,000 yuan over six months. That money has been redirected into developing new commentary tracks covering alley origins and old-house histories. The transmitters need a battery replacement once a year, and a single charging unit handles 10 devices simultaneously, fully recharged in about an hour.
What comes next
Yingmi is working on adding AR interaction so visitors can scan codes to see reimagined scenes of ancient city life during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Additional minority languages are also being developed. The goal is straightforward: make sure every visitor, regardless of where they come from or what language they speak, can hear the stories this Silk Road town has been carrying for a thousand years.