Place
Linzi
The wealthy capital of the state of Qi and home to the Jixia Academy, a state-funded gathering place for the Hundred Schools of Thought: Zou Yan taught here, weaving the cycles of yin and yang and the five phases into a cosmology of dynastic change.
Linzi was the Qi capital and, by one Warring States account, so crowded that people brushed shoulders in the street and could raise a curtain against the sun by lifting their sleeves together. Its wealth paid for the Jixia Academy. Zou Yan taught there and left with a reputation that had rulers receiving him with extraordinary ceremony, since a man who could tell a dynasty which of the five phases it governed by was worth flattering.
Thinkers Connected to Linzi
Mencius
Human nature is good. Like water flows downhill, the heart flows toward compassion. Nurture it, and virtue grows.
Zou Yan
He wove the cycles of yin and yang together with five elemental phases into a single cosmology of change, then used it to predict which dynasty must inevitably rise, conquer, and eventually fall next.