Liangzhu Culture, Hangzhou

Famous for its black pottery and polished jade accessories, Liangzhu Culture had been flourishing 4,000 to 5,300 years before present. A 290,000-square-meter area ancient city has been found in Liangzhu ancient cultural site, in Pingyao Town (瓶窑镇), Yuhang District in northwest suburb of Hangzhou, China. It might be built not later than the late period of Liangzhu Culture, but the actual date of construction has yet to prove. Archeologists say Liangzhu Culture have occupied about a half of China's soil. Hangzhou's Liangzhu ancient city is the capital of the lost country, the Liangzhu area is the biggest discovery of ancient town of that era in China and it is the first discovery of Liangzhu Culture in the lower reaches of Yangtze River.

There are four city gates respectively at east, west, south and north sides of the old city. Farmland and some residential houses surrounding the ancient capital, where there are some daily trash relics left near the city wall. The wall are built with great care that heavy sand is added more and more down to the bottom of it.

Liangzhu ancient city's south and north sides locate the branch ridges of the Tianmushan Mountain (天目山). There are two rivers flowing eastwards at these two sides that provide water resources to the city. 

The soil color in Liangzhu area is mostly dark grey but the ancient construction is yellow sand, a foreign matter. A protective river was built near to the west city wall. The section is now a paddy field. The yellowish west wall is length about 1,000 meters, with 4 meters height and width 40 to 60 meters, much thicker than the Xian City Wall. The walls at other three directions were built by much better jobs. The paved stone pieces on the walls are edgy, obviously processed manually by workers. Some parts of the wall are added black sticky soil for intensifying water resistance.

Some says the imperial dynasty history of old China should be rewritten as Liangzhu, Xia and Shang and so on, but not as common saying, i.e., Xia is the first feudal dynasty in China. Yan Wenming, an archeologist and Professor at Beijing University, said that discovery of the royal palace and city wall, as well as we saw the location, layout and construction of the ancient capital, all indicated that Liangzhu had a lot to do with Chinese history.

Liangzhu Culture had been distributed along Taihu Lake in east China, this area included Yuhang of northwest Hangzhou, southern Jiaxing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Nanjing. Also some parts of Anhui and Jiangxi Provinces. There were some traces of the culture found in northern Jiangsu and southern Shanxi Provinces.