The City of Qi

When the Zhou dynasty was founded, King Wu enfeoffed his leading minister Jiang Ziya here and made the state of Qi with its capital at Yingqiu. After several moves the court settled back and renamed the place Linzi, for the river it stood beside. From then on it was the capital of one of the largest states in China for more than eight hundred years, through the Western Zhou, the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, until Qin destroyed it. Tradition put the city at its height at some 70,000 households and about 350,000 people. Old accounts say sleeves raised in the streets made shade, and sweat fell like rain. In 1994 the State Council named Linzi a national historical and cultural city, and what brings visitors now is the excavated site: the two cities, the gates, and the tombs of the kings of Tian Qi outside the walls.

The plan of the site is unusually legible because it was never rebuilt over. It divides into a great city, where the people lived, and a small city, where the ruler lived, and the two are joined together. The circuit runs 21 kilometres and encloses 15 square kilometres, with thirteen gates. Inside, the main roads cross in a grid, and the city had a complete water supply and drainage system — for a city of that date, a remarkable piece of public engineering. Outside the walls are the Tian Qi royal tombs and other pre-Qin burials, including the pits of horses and chariots that make Qi legible in a way no text does. Standing on the edge of the field today, you are looking at a plan rather than at ruins: the streets are still legible from the air and on the ground.

The city was not only a capital but a kind of university. Confucius came to Linzi to hear the Shao music; Mencius served the king of Qi; Zhuangzi was invited to be his chancellor. In the Warring States period the court set up the Jixia Academy to attract schools of thought to lecture, debate and write, and Xunzi was one of its ritual officers; the thinkers gathered there included Zou Yan, Song Xing, Yin Wen, Peng Meng, Tian Pian and Shen Dao. What made the city rich was not the court but the sea: Linzi stood near the Bohai and had the profits of fish and salt, with ironworks, foundries, coin casting, pottery and weaving workshops across the city and in its outskirts. In 2004 the international football association recognised Linzi, in Zibo, Shandong, as the birthplace of world football.