<P> During the Warring States and Han, the beginnings of a classical textual tradition of city planning developed . Although there is little direct evidence that any classical text exerted an important influence on urban design until the late imperial period, the texts themselves have a much longer history . While some important literary evidence concerning Zhou urban construction can be found in the Classic of Poetry and the Book of Documents, during the Han dynasty a text emerged that would later become the locus classicus of the ideal imperial capital . </P> <P> This text, The Artificer's Record, is a description of craftsmen's techniques that includes two sections on city construction . It is a late addition to the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli 周 禮) one of three ritual classics canonized during the Han . The Rites of Zhou is a blueprint for governmental administration divided into six offices representing Heaven, Earth, and each of the four seasons . The section for the Offices of Winter, a bureau charged with the oversight of public works, was lost sometime before or during the Qin to Han transition . During the Western Han, The Artificer's Record was added as a replacement . </P> <P> The first section on urban construction in The Artificer's Record describes ancient techniques for siting a city, including methods for precisely orienting the site to the cardinal directions and determining the levelness of the land . The second section describes the basic the features of the ideal capital city: </P> <P> "The carpenters construct the capital city, which is a square of nine li on each side . On each side there are three gates . Within the city there are nine north - south and nine east - west roads; the north - south roads are as wide as nine carriages side by side . The ancestral temple of the ruling house is to the left of the palace, the temple to god of the soil is to the right . The palace faces the court in front and the market is behind it . The court and the market are both one fu in area ." </P>

Large state first to concentrate wealth round king