Shang City Ruins

As an ancient city with a history of over 3,000 years, Zhengzhou City is abundant in cultural relics. Among countless relics underground, the site of Zhengzhou Shang City is one of the important excavations in Chinese archaeological history. Discovered by Henan cultural work team in 1950, the site is of great significance to the cultural study of the Shang Dynasty (17th- 11th century BC). Excavated data proved that the existing period of the Shang City is earlier than that of Yin Ruin in Anyang, the site of the capital city of the late Shang Dynasty.

The Shang City Ruins are located in the eastern suburbs of Zhengzhou city. The Shang dynasty is one of the earliest recorded dynasties in Chinese history, and evidence points to the existence of an ancient city here as early as 1600B.C and 1100B.C. Most famous for mysterious pictographic, colorful bronze culture and several brutal kings, this is one of the earliest examples of early Chinese urban life.

The site occupies an area of 25 square kilometers, with the grand-scale city in the center. Shaped in a near-perfect rectangle, the city was encircled with tall rampart on four sides. The city site has a perimeter of 7 kilometers and its remained wall is 5 meters at the highest with a base of 32 meters at the widest. A number of construction foundations, large or small, were discovered in the 400,000-square-meter open area at the northeast part of the city site, with the largest one over 2,000 square meters and smallest one about 100 square meters. Most of those foundations are in the shape of rectangle with orderly arranged holes and some have base stones.

Each Shang City would have been originally divided up into a central walled area housing large governmental buildings that was surrounded by a ring of small villages. Each individual village would specialize in a specific product so that between all the villages, a wide variety of products was covered, enabling each area to be self sufficient.

Today, this area is more of a public park and walkway. The original walls were rough and uneven and stood at about 10 meters high. A wooden frame was originally filled with earth that was pounded until it became solid. The frame was then removed and the earth was solid enough to make a wall structure. Visitors can walk around the walls, although you must descend at some areas and cross through the city.

There are two spots here where you can see the main exhibits; bronze ware excavated from royal families, stone ware, jade carving, ceramics and other daily utensils. The remains also include some original wells and tombs. The ruins can be seen at the East Gate (dong men kou), close to bus No.2 stop. Alternately, bus No.3 stops near the old city.