After achieving the unification, the Yuan court launched movements to transform political space of Lin’an, the original capital of the South Song Dynasty, whose political changes involved a close relation with the ruling situation in the south of the Yangtze River. After occupying Lin’an, Yuan armies gradually abandoned or transformed ritual architectures inside and outside the city, which served as obvious symbols of imperial power, but they also took certain protective measures for taking political impact into consideration. Worrying about deteriorated situation in the south and the administration of Sango(桑哥), Kublai(the fi fth emperor of the Yuan Dynasty) started relatively radical transformations by forcing to change architectures into temples including imperial palaces, Taoist temples in the court, the Circular Mound Altar in the southern suburb, as well as mausoleums of emperors and empresses and so on, which sparked intense social unrest in the south of the Yangtze River. Afterward, the Yuan court adjusted its relevant measures, taking Hangzhou as a provincial city, respecting local cultural traditions, and building governmental offi ces, temples and gate towers in accordance with Confucian rituals. At the turn of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, the historical facts related to the transformation of Hangzhou in the early Yuan Dynasty gradually blurred, and then many odd legends came into being, serving as important historical lessons learned by later rulers to govern regions in the south of the Yangtze River.