Píngyīn

Pingyin lies in western Shandong where the last spurs of the Taishan range reach the southern bank of the Yellow River. The name means the north side of the Eastern Plain, and the place appears in the Zuo Zhuan: it was a Qi frontier fortress against Lu and Jin, and the long Qi wall still runs through its hills. In 555 BC a coalition led by Jin broke the Qi army here. The Sui first set up a county in the district in 596 under the name Yushan, and renamed it Pingyin in 606.

Under the Yuan, Pingyin belonged to Dongping Circuit. The early Ming placed it under Dongping Prefecture, which was soon reduced to a department of Yanzhou Prefecture, and the county followed it. In 1735 the Qing transferred Pingyin to Tai'an Prefecture. Beside the Daqing River to the west and north and the lake of Dongping to the south, its farmers lived with the river's shifting floods.