As chaos reigned during the Warring States period (475-221BC), rulers across ancient China turned to intellectuals to find a way out of perpetual war, and the Jixia Academy in the state of Qi stood out for its power to attract the greatest Chinese thinkers of the time. The institute used to be a place relegated to the historical record ; experts believed it probably existed, but little was known about Jixia and there was no definitive proof that it was a real place. That was until late February this year, when archaeologists in Shandong province in eastern China announced that they had found the ruins of the institute, a potential breakthrough that came amid a five-year-long excavation push. The scientists used historical records and carbon dating to identify the site as the Jixia Academy. Little is known about Jixia, and some historians doubt the place should even be called an “academy”. “Academy makes me think of a place where there is systematic training of students, maybe granting of degrees. To me it makes a little more sense to imagine it as a think tank,” said Paul Goldin, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the US and an expert in Chinese thought. Jixia was set up by the ruling government of Qi (323–221BC), one of the more powerful of the warring states whose borders were similar to those of modern-day Shandong. Goldin said it was plausible that the institute was launched during the reign of King Xuan of Qi (319-301 BC), and it probably operated for about 150 years. Wicky Tse, an associate professor in the department of history at Chinese University of Hong Kong said: “With the sponsorship of the Qi court, the Jixia Academy could offer favourable conditions to the shi (intellectuals) who came to join and promote their scholarship. I would say the wealth and political and social stability contributed greatly to the intellectual development in the Qi kingdom.” Goldin said the kings of Qi wanted to attract the top thinkers in China because “everyone knew the old political system was falling apart”. “The whole system was going to collapse, and if you managed to find thinkers who had good ideas, then they would be someone worth recruiting to your court.” The rulers of the old system, a divine-right monarchy set up by the Zhou dynasty (1050–221BC), were essentially figureheads by the time of the Warring States period, and rulers of the states held power over their borders. Life at that time was defined by constant warfare. Zhou Boqun, an assistant professor in the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong, said: “Warfare was an incentive for everything. A lot of the changes, both intellectual and political changes, were war-driven. Everyone wanted to end the perennial warfare; everyone wanted a stable society, that was the general wish shared by almost everybody.” If a great thinker could find a suitable path out of war, it would be worth it for a ruler to facilitate them living and working in the kingdom. Warfare was an incentive for everything. Zhou Boqun, an expert from the University of Hong Kong Some of the major Chinese philosophers that arrived in Jixia were Shen Dao, a leader in Chinese legalism thought; Song Xing, a leader of Mohism, an intellectual and religious movement that was influential during the Warring States period; and Xun Kuang, a Confucian thinker whose work is immortalised in the book Xunzi . However, for the history of Jixia Academy, no figure is more important than Mencius. His conversations with King Xuan were documented as part of a compilation called Mencius , one of the “Thirteen Classics” in Chinese history, although scholars believe it was more likely written by his disciples or other followers. “If you read Mencius, during his conversations with the king of Qi, he actually criticises the king a lot, and the king listens to him,” said Zhou. This, however, does not make Jixia Academy a bastion of free speech, which is a key reason the experts compared it to a modern think tank rather than an academy. They said the king tolerated a certain level of dissent, but it was unlikely up for public debate and the ideas were meant for the ears of him and his advisers. While many of the architects of core Chinese philosophy – like Mencius, Xun Kuang, Song Xing and Shen Dao – lived and worked at Jixia, it can be a challenge to label the philosophies espoused at the time, especially because Confucianism was not popular and it’s difficult to say if Daoism existed as a fully-formed philosophy during that era. For example, Goldin relayed a story from the book Mencius in which the Confucian philosopher explains he is a master because of his ability to hone his Qi , a Daoist idea. “Where did Mencius get an idea like that? Confucius had never spoken in those terms. It’s hard to find any Confucian who ever said that. Well, maybe he heard that at the Jixia Academy or a similar institution,” he said. As modern archaeologists explore the site, there is an opportunity to learn about the potential opulence, or lack thereof, of Jixia. The site could teach us how it operated and, if the scientists get lucky, reveal artefacts that enlighten us about how the philosophers lived and worked. Zhou said: “We have a lot of bamboo manuscripts from the Warring States period now. I’m hoping that archaeology will produce more manuscripts that can be safely identified as the work of the Jixia Academy.”