Chéngjì

Chéngjì was an old county of the Lǒngyòu region, whose seat moved more than once through the hills and valleys around Qínzhōu. It lies in the cradle of the Dàdìwān settlements, where Neolithic villagers of the Yangshao, Majiayao and Qijia cultures left dozens of sites, and tradition made it the birthplace of the culture hero Fúxī. Han historians gave it a native son, the frontier general Lǐ Guǎng, whose family, the Li of Lǒngxī, later claimed descent for the Tang imperial house.

The county was known from the Qin and Han periods. In the Tang, the seat of Qinzhou moved back and forth between Chengji and Shanggui, and it settled at Chengji after the Tang recovered the region from Tibet in 849. The Song moved the prefectural and county seats to the Tianshui area, and the Jin created Qín'ān County nearby in 1157. The Ming abolished Chengji County in 1369 and folded it into Qinzhou, but the road through the valley, where the Three Kingdoms campaign of Jiēting was fought, kept its place on the route west.