Rubbings of Damaged stone carvings on Mount Tai
2 min readSquare Brick Engraved with 12 Lesser Seal characters At the local level，Ying Zheng replaced the system of enfeoffment（practiced since the WesternZhou Dynasty）with the system of prefectures and counties，and divided the whole country into 36 prefectures.Each prefecture had jurisdiction over certain counties，towns，and villages.In this way the imperial rule reached every remote place，and such an administrative pattern had been copied by almost all the dynasties of later ages.
In 215 BC，general Meng Tian led an army of 300 thousand to attack the Huns living in the north，and captured the Hetao area（at the top of the Great Bend of the Yellow River in today’s Inner Mongolia and Ningxia）.The next year，the Qin troops marched southward to occupy Guangdong and Guangxi，and set up three prefectures there，namely，Nanhai，Guilin and Xiang.Plus the Minzhong Prefecture（in present Fuzhou City of Fujian）established in the coastal area of the southeast，the number of prefectures nationwide thus rose to 40.Ying Zheng finally ruled a vast territory stretching eastward to the sea，westward to Longxi（referring to western Gansu），northward to the Great Wall，and southward to the prefecture of Xiang.
Qin Wei Zhao Han Yan Chu Qi
characters Used in the seven Main states in the Warring States Period Secondly，Ying Zheng gave orders to standardize the script.During the Eastern Zhou Dynasty（770-256 BC），all kinds of characters had been used in different states，which constituted a tremendous obstacle to the domestic cultural exchange after unification.Based on the greater seal character current in the Qin State in the Warring States Period，Li sifirst invented the lesser seal character，also known as the”Qin seal character”noted for its much simpler strokes，and made known to the whole country.
Cheng Miao further simplified the writing of the Chinese script by changing the seal character（zhuan-shu）into the official script（li-shu）which became a common style of calligraphy in the following Han Dynasty.
