A PLACE, A STORY / Hangzhou
Liangzhu Archaeological Ruins
Earthen remains preserve the outline of a much earlier city. Liangzhu’s water systems and planned spaces reveal a society built around rice cultivation.
© Siyuwj · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons. Resized and JPEG compressed. · Original source · License
© LukeLOU · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons. Resized and JPEG compressed. · Original source · License
At Liangzhu, the traces of a city reach back roughly five thousand years. Earthen structures, burial grounds and water management works preserve evidence of a society supported by rice cultivation. The story is less about a single surviving building than about how a whole landscape was organized.
Look across the open ground and imagine the connections between water, food and daily life. What would you need to build a city?
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