The stone tablet in Changqing, Shandong Province, marks the point where construction of the Great Wall of Qi began.

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The Great Wall of Qi runs through Shandong Province from the Guangli Village, Xiaoli Town in southwestern Changqing District in Jinan, the provincial capital in the west to the Huanghai Sea in the east. In late April and Early May this year, reporters joined a field investigation to Xiaoli with staff from Changqing’s department of cultural relic preservation.

Although the main purpose of the Great Wall was to resist invasion from other states, the primary goal in building it might have been to prevent flooding. According to Liu Bin, head of the department, Guangli, the southwest frontier of Qi was located at Pingyin County, in the transition zone between the hill edge of Mount Taishan and the plains. West of the county was the ancient Jishui River. The low-lying area between the county and the river consisted of a marsh most of the time and then became a vast expanse of water and lakes in the wet season, and was thus unsuitable for farming. The State of Qi built a crooked dike at the southern and western sides of Pingyin to prevent floods. And this was the rudimentary structure that preceded the Great Wall.

Later, the State of Qi strengthened the dike and built a Great Wall with military functions. Introducing the background of the Great Wall, Zhang Huasong, vice-president of Jinan Academy of Social Sciences, said that in order to resist invasions by the Lu, Jin, Wei and other states, Duke Ling of Qi organized massive forces in Pingyin and ordered them to strengthen the dike to make it higher, wider and longer. Meanwhile, a city moat was built outside the dike. Following that, an ongoing water project became a rammed earth wall for military defense.

At the western side of the China National Highway 220 (G220) south to Guangli, there are stone tablets marking the source of the Great Wall of Qi as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level. Now, one can see hundreds of meters of remains of the Great Wall as well as walls rebuilt on the basis of the original style. Looking into the distance from the G220, one can see endless mountains where the Great Wall of Qi winds its way through. After ascending hundreds of meters on the road in front of the mountains, there is a monumental structure forming the Chinese character of qi constructed by counterfeit knife-shaped currency used by the state of Qi.

The department for relics protection in Changqing has done much work to protect this historical site. In 1996 and 1998, they organized two groups of specialized personnel to do field investigations, obtaining first-hand information and materials of the site, based on which they basically got a clear picture of the Great Wall of Qi.