Nanking
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Nanking,
China: see NanjingNanjingor Nanking
[southern capital], city (1994 est. pop. 2,224,200), capital of Jiangsu prov., E central China, in a bend of the Chang (Yangtze) River. It has served at times in the past as capital of China.
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Nanking
a city in China, located on the right bank of the lower Yangtze River. A major national economic and cultural center. Capital of Kiangsu Province. Population, 1,670,000 (1965, estimate).
Nanking is an important transportation junction, with a river port accessible to oceangoing ships. A two-tiered railroad and highway bridge spans the Yangtze at Nanking. Local industrial products include machine tools, turbines, electronic instruments, electrical equipment, trucks, agricultural machinery, metal products, chemicals (particularly chemical fertilizers and synthetic fibers), cement, textiles, and food. A thermal electric power plant is located in the city. Nanking is a scientific and cultural center, with a university, eight other institutions of higher education, a museum, an observatory, a botanical garden, and a zoo.
Nanking was founded in 472 B.C. At various times it was known as Chinling, Moling, Chienyeh, Chienk’ang, and Kiangning. Beginning in the third century A.D., it served as the capital for such major feudal dynasties as the Wu (third century) and the Eastern Chin, Liu-Sung, Southern Ch’i, Liang, and Ch’en (fourth through sixth centuries). Nanking was also the capital of China during the initial period of the rule of the Ming dynasty (1368–1421). From 1421 to 1911 it was the center of the Chiangnan vicegerency (Kiangsu, Kianghsi, and Anhwei provinces). From March 1853 through 1864, under the name of T’ienching (“heavenly capital”), it was the capital of the state established during the Taiping uprising.
Nanking was a leading center of the bourgeois Hsin-hai Revolution (1911–13); from the end of December 1911 until April 1912 it was the capital of China’s first republican government, led by Sun Yat-sen. From April 1912 until 1927, Nanking was the capital of Kiangsu Province. After Chiang Kai’shek’s counterrevolutionary coup, of Apr. 12, 1927, the city became China’s capital. In December 1937, Nanking fell to the Japanese and from 1940 to 1945 was the site of the puppet government set up by the Japanese and headed by Wang Ching-wei. Again from 1946 through 1949, Nanking served as the sent of government of the Republic of China. The city was liberated from the Kuomintang by the People’s Liberation Army on Apr. 23, 1949.
Nanking has an irregular layout. The Imperial City, built in the 14th and 15th centuries according to an elaborate plan and surrounded by a massive stone wall in 1400, is located in the eastern part of the city. Noteworthy architectural monuments of Nanking include the stone Porcelain Pagoda of the Ch’ihsia-shih temple, built during the tenth century; the Wu-liang-tien, a beamless brick temple, constructed in 1398 within the Ling-koshih temple; portions of the city wall that date from the Ming era (from the 14th through the 17th centuries); the imperial tombs of the Liang dynasty (ruled A.D. 502–557); with their monumental stone statuary of fantastic animals; the tomb of Chu Yüan-chang (14th century), with stone figures of officials, warriors, and animals; and the tomb of Sun Yat-sen, constructed 1926–29.