Zīchuān

Zichuan lies among the hills and valleys of central Shandong, on the old site of Banyang, which the Yuan and early Ming made the seat of a circuit and a prefecture before it settled as a county under Jinan Prefecture. The walled town is called the Turtle City. Tradition says a turtle was dug up from the moat, and in 1501 the magistrate replanned the town in a turtle's shape, with the head to the southwest, a gate at each foot, the granary as the belly and the tail at the northeast corner. When the walls were repaired in 1519, workers were said to have dug up dozens of small turtles again.

The district produced the Ming finance minister Bi Ziyan, born in 1569, and the writer Pu Songling, born in 1640 at Pujiazhuang. Pu spent most of his life teaching and failed repeatedly in the examinations. His collection of fox spirits, ghosts and human encounters, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, circulated in manuscript among readers while he lived.