Linzi (Qi State Capital)
Core idea
Vast double-enclosure Eastern Zhou capital pairing a great city with a palace city on a near-grid of broad avenues
Why it matters
A leading model of planned Chinese capital form and the intellectual centre of the Jixia Academy
Description
Linzi, in modern Zibo in Shandong, became the capital of the state of Qi around 859 BCE under Duke Xian and flourished through the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods for over six centuries. Built between two rivers, it comprised a large rectangular great city adjoined at its south-west corner by a smaller walled palace city, with a total wall circuit of about 21 km enclosing roughly 16 sq km. Seven broad avenues, some about 20 m wide and several kilometres long, formed a rough grid served by engineered water-supply and drainage systems. From the late fourth century it housed the Jixia Academy, China's earliest great centre of learning.
Significance
One of the largest and wealthiest cities of Eastern Zhou China, Linzi exemplifies early planned urbanism: its paired great-city and palace-city scheme, near-grid of broad avenues and urban water infrastructure prefigure the classic form of later Chinese capitals. As host of the Jixia Academy it was also the intellectual capital of the era, gathering thinkers such as Mencius and Xunzi.
What became of it
Capital of Qi from the 9th century BCE through the Warring States period and reputedly China's largest, richest city; absorbed into the Qin/Han empire after Qi's fall in 221 BCE and gradually declined, surviving as ruins near modern Zibo.
Critique
The famous 70,000-household / ~210,000-adult-male figure derives from Su Qin's rhetoric in the Records of the Grand Historian and is widely treated as politically inflated rather than a reliable census.
What shaped it
- The grid (c. 2500 BCE)
- Bronze and iron metallurgy (Bronze c. 3300 BCE / Iron from c. 1200 BCE)
Plans it influenced
- Chang’an (Tang Capital) (7th c.)
- Chengdu (Qin Planned City) (c. 311 BCE)