Scientists from
Lanzhou University have established that widespread agriculture began in Li County around 6,400
years ago as part of the
Banpo phase of the
Yangshao culture of the
Wei River valley. The warm, humid climate of the mid-
Holocene made the area productive for
millet prior to the drier conditions which began about 2000 BC. By the time of
ancient China, Lixian was part of the territory of
Xichui (lit. "the Western March"). During the
Shang dynasty,
Zhongjue and his son
Feilian controlled Xichui from the midst of the area's
Rong tribes. Feilian's son
Elai served
King Zhou as his bodyguard and was killed when King
Wu overthrew him and founded the
Zhou dynasty. Under the Zhou, however, Elai's familythe
House of Yingcontinued to control the area. His great-great-grandson was
Daluo who had two sons by different mothers in the early 9th century BC. His reputation grew to the point that King
Xiao charged him with breeding and providing the
imperial cavalry. He proved so successful that, when the Marquis of Shen blocked his inheritance of Daluo's estate, King Xiao created him lord of nearby
Qin (present-day
Zhangjiachuan, Gansu). The area was the home of the noted 10th-century memoirist
Wang Renhui (). During the
Cultural Revolution, the area received a bit of local notoriety for its flagging grain production. The "experiences of Li County" were used by regional officials to caution against implementation of
Tachai-style collectivism in the mid-1970s. The collective farms in the area saw decreasing year-on-year yields of grain until, by 1976, all 29 of the county's
communes were consuming more grain than they produced. This provoked official action, which denounced the complaints as "sabotage" and "poison", in the period between the fall of the
Gang of Four and the rise of
Deng Xiaoping's
economic reforms. The area is also subject to
earthquakes, with 25 recorded as having a
magnitude of 5.0 or higher. The largest recorded was an 8.0-magnitude quake that struck on July 21, 1654; most recently,
a 6.6-magnitude quake struck on July 22, 2013. == Economy ==