Lìchéng

Lìchéng is the old city of Jinan, built below Mount Li, the Thousand Buddha Hill, and named for it. Springs well up all over its streets: Baotu Spring, the source of the ancient Luo River, surges out of the ground, and the springs gather in Daming Lake to the north. Poets and officials celebrated them in the Jin stone record of famous springs and in Ming poems on the seventy-two springs.

In 1376 the Ming moved the Shandong provincial government from Qingzhou to Licheng, so that provincial, prefectural and county offices all stood in one city. Within a generation the walls were tested. In 1400 Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, besieged Jinan, flooded it by breaching the river dikes, and was nearly killed by an iron slab dropped at the gate when he came to receive a feigned surrender. The defender Tie Xuan hung tablets bearing the name of the first Ming emperor on the walls so that the Prince's cannon could not fire. After more than three months the Prince withdrew.

In the 1460s the Prince of De, Zhū Jiànlín, built his palace around the Pearl Spring south of the lake, and the springs kept their fame, though not always their flow: the Licheng gazetteer records Baotu Spring running dry in 1618 and again in 1641. Under the Qing the city stayed the seat of Shandong government, and both the Kāngxī and Qiánlóng emperors came to see Baotu Spring on their tours through Shandong.