Beneath the streets of modern Zhengzhou lie the ruins of a Shang Dynasty city dating back to approximately 1600 BC, one of the earliest urban settlements in Chinese history. Discovered in 1955 during construction work, the site includes a seven-kilometre rammed-earth city wall — sections of which are still visible in several places around the city — and the excavated remains of bronze foundries, pottery kilns, and residential areas.
The ruins park on Zhengzhou's eastern side preserves accessible sections of the ancient wall, with some explanatory signage. It is not a dramatic site in the way that, say, the Terracotta Army is dramatic — you are essentially looking at very old dirt banks — but the historical context is extraordinary. This was one of the capitals of the Shang, the civilisation that created China's first writing system and its first great bronze art. The nearby Zhengzhou Museum has models and artefacts from the excavations that help visualise what stood here three and a half thousand years ago.