Qingzhou consisted of two cities, a northern and a southern, spearated by the Nanyang River. The northern one was the very Dongyangcheng built by Yang Muzhi of the Eastern Jin dynasty according to Shuijing Zhu (Annotations of The Book of Waters). It is unclear when the southern city of Nanyangcheng was built, but the ear-liest literal reference appeared in the first half of the tenth century. By the Later Tang of the Five Dynasties (about 934) the local officials built their residence in Nanyangcheng, suggesting that the city did never yield to its northern counterpart in economic prosperity and political prominence. The decline of the northern city was caused by the invasion of the Nurchen Jin people, who relocated the prefectural seat of Qingzhou to the southern city, calling it Yi du Fu(an administrative unit). The Yuan dynasty that annexed the Jin and Song set up Yi du Lu(an administrative unit) in the same southern city, its jurisdictional area approximating the Qingzhou city of the Ming-Qing er-a. The rammed-earth city walls wert replaced with brick ones in the Ming dynasty, and re-building work took place in the Qing dynasty repeatedly.
