ABSTRACT
Ye city was built in 659 bc by Qi and burnt to the ground in ad 580. Back then, the fire lasted more than a month. It is a tremendous pity that the more-than-1200-year-old city was finally turned into ashes. The remaining broken walls and debris have been engulfed by the Zhang River and sunk deep in the earth. There are merely sporadic records in this regard, and generations of literati have composed nostalgic poems or rhapsodies about it. The lost city has become a mystery. From the 1980s, the outline of Ye city site has been clarified through archaeological explorations, and the city itself has been determined as the origin of East Asian countries’ ancient capital layout. This introductory part begins with basic information about Ye and discusses the existing research and debates about Ye.
