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 Taiyuan
is the capital of Shanxi Province,
and a city rich in political, military, and religious history. Located
along the invasion corridors between the nomadic regions to the north
and the agricultural heartland around the Yellow River, it was the site
of repeated invasion and occupation over the centuries. The central
Shanxi region is rich in Buddhist and Taoist sites, including the famous
Mt. Wutai and the Taoist Palace of Eternal Joy. Taiyuan is now a major
industrial city in northern China, close to major iron and coal
reserves.
Settlements in the
Taiyuan region date back to Neolithic times. The town, then known as
Jinyang, was founded some 2,400 years ago. Its location in a valley near
the Fen River put it near the invasion routes from the nomadic regions in
the north to the agricultural heartland near the Yellow River.
The city suffered from frequent occupation by invaders, including
the Xiongnu in Han times and the Toba (Tabgatch) Turkic rulers of the
Northern Wei in the 4th-6th centuries. The founder of the Tang dynasty,
Li Yuan, used Taiyuan as a base for the peasant uprising that overthrew
the Sui regime in the early 7th century. Jinyang was destroyed in 979 by
Song dynasty forces, but rebuilt three years later and renamed Songcheng.
Starting in 1375 in the early Ming dynasty the town became the seat of
government for the Taiyuan region and expanded greatly.
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Jin Temple (Jinci),
Taiyuan |
English, French, and
Russian communities exploited
the region’s mineral resources in the 19th century. Taiyuan was one of
the centers of the nationalistic Boxer Rebellion around 1900, when all
the foreign missionaries and their families were put to death on the
order of the provincial governor. After the end of the Qing imperial
system in 1911, Taiyuan was governed by a regional warlord named Yan
Xishan between 1912 and 1949. Operating under the Kuomintang but largely
an independent ruler, he suppressed opium smoking and foot-binding,
among other reforms, but allowed development of coal resources by the
Japanese in the early 1940’s.
Location
of Taiyuan (Capital City of Shanxi Province)
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