Yangzhou is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province, East China. Sitting on the north bank of the Yangtze, it borders the provincial capital Nanjing to the southwest, Huai'an to the north, Yancheng to the northeast, Taizhou to the east, and Zhenjiang across the river to the south. Its population was 4,559,797 at the 2020 census and its urban area is home to 2,635,435 inhabitants, including three urban districts, currently in the agglomeration.
Historically, Yangzhou was one of the wealthiest cities in China, known at various periods for its great merchant families, poets, artists, and scholars. Its name (lit. "Rising Prefecture") refers to its former position as the capital of the ancient Yangzhou prefecture in imperial China. Yangzhou was one of the first cities to benefit from one of the earliest World Bank loans in China, used to construct Yangzhou thermal power station in 1994.
Yangzhou is also a major city for scientific research outputs, appearing among the world's top 200 cities as of 2024.
Administration
Currently, the prefecture-level city of Yangzhou administers six county-level divisions, including three districts, two county-level cities and one county. Accordingly, they are further divided into 98 township-level divisions, including 87 towns and townships, and 11 subdistricts.
Map Subdivision Simplified Chinese Hanyu Pinyin Population Area Density City Proper Guangling District Guǎnglíng Qū 542,305 423.09 805.92 Hanjiang District Hánjiāng Qū 726,906 552.68 1,902.23 Suburban Jiangdu District Jiāngdū Qū 926,577 1,329.90 757.03 Rural Baoying County Bǎoyìng Xiàn 682,219 1,461.55 514.57 Satellite cities (County-level cities) Yizheng Yízhēng Shì 532,571 902.20 625.08 Gaoyou Gāoyóu Shì 709,572 1,921.78 387.49Total4,559,7976,591.21676.62 In November 2011, Weiyang District () was merged into Hanjiang District,while the former county-level Jiangdu City became Jiangdu District.
History Ancient China During the Spring and Autumn period of the Eastern Zhou dynasty, the hegemon Fuchai of Wu constructed the Han or Hangou Canal Hángōu) to improve his supply lines from his center of power around present-day Suzhou to the North China Plain, where he was engaged in an ongoing conflict with Qi. Taking advantage of the many streams and lakes of the Jianghuai Plain, the canal connected the Yangtze River within present-day Yangzhou to the Huai River within present-day Huai'an by 486BC. The next year, Fuchai established a fortress to protect the southern end of the new canal at Hancheng. Following the Chinese urban design principles of the time, it was constructed as a 3 li by 3 li square about above the water level on the Yangtze's northern bank, with the Han Canal forming a moat around the southern and eastern sides of the city. The town was intended to stall any possible counterattack from Qi down the canal, giving time to raise reinforcements from Suzhou and Wu's other lands in the Yangtze Delta.
Imperial China Under the Eastern Han dynasty, the area was organized as the Guangling Commandery of Xu Province. Its seat of governmentalso known as Guanglingwas also near the confluence of the Yangtze and the Han Canal, although at a slightly different location than the former Wu fortress.
Under the Sui, Guangling was reorganized as Yang Province (zhou) in the year AD 590. Its seat of government took the new name as well. Prospering as the Emperor Yang (r.604–617) connected the Han Canal to other waterways north and south to form the core of the Grand Canal, Yangzhou became the southern capital of China under the name Jiangdu. With the failure of his invasions of Korea and a series of natural disasters, Emperor Yang abandoned to north entirely in 616 and made Jiangdu his primary capital until his assassination in 618.
Restoring the former name Guangling, the Tang made the city a major port for foreign trade and turned it into a leading economic and cultural center. Many foreign merchants lived in the city, including many Koreans, Arabs, and Persians. Thousands of Muslim Arab, Persian and other foreign merchants were massacred in 760 by forces under Tian Shengong, sent to suppress the city's rebellion.
Jiangdu served briefly as the capital of a revived Wu Kingdom during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
After the 1127 Jingkang Incident led to the Jurchen-led Jin conquest of Kaifeng, the Song used Yangzhou as their capital in 1128 and 1129. Song troops under Du Chong Dù Chōng, d.1141) breached the southern embankments of the Yellow River in an effort to stop the southward of Jin army, but the resulting avulsion caused the river to swing south of the Shandong Peninsula and capture the Si River and lower Huai. The Grand Canal was truncated for decades and the Southern Song moved to Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang).
In 1280, during the Yuan, Yangzhou was the site of a massive gunpowder explosion when the bomb warehouse of the Weiyang arsenal accidentally caught fire. The blast killed over a hundred guards, hurled debris from buildings into the air that landed 10 li away, and could be felt 100 li. Marco Polo claimed to have served Kubilai Khan in Yangzhou shortly thereafter, variously placed at 1282–1285 or 1282–1287. Although some versions of Polo's memoirs imply that he was the governor of Yangzhou, it is more likely that he was an official in the salt industry if he was employed there at all. Surviving Chinese texts do not mention him at all. It is well documented, however, that Kublai Khan trusted foreigners more than Chinese/Han subjects in internal affairs and the discovery of the 1342 tomb of Caterina Vilioni, member of an Italian trading family in Yangzhou, does, however, suggest the existence of an Italian community in the city in the 14th century. Moreover, both in The Travels of Marco Polo and in the History of Yuan there is documentation about a Nestorian Christian who funded two churches in China during the three years he served as an official of the emperor. This functionary is named "Mar Sarchis" by Marco Polo and "Ma Xuelijisi" in the History of Yuan. This person served as a supervisor in the prefecture of Zhenjiang.Giulio Busi, "Marco Polo. Viaggio ai confini del Medioevo", Collezione Le Scie. Nuova serie, Milano, Mondadori, 2018, , § "Boluo, il funzionario invisibile Arabic inscriptions during the 13th and 14th centuries similarly indicate a revival of the Muslim community.
During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) until the 19th century Yangzhou acted as a major trade exchange center for salt (a government regulated commodity), rice, and silk. The Ming were largely responsible for building the city as it now stands and surrounding it with of walls, in part as protection against Wokou raids.
There was a Hui or Chinese Muslim community in Yangzhou during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties with historic mosques like Crane Mosque and the tomb of Sayyid Puhaddin.
After the fall of Beijing and northern China to the Manchus in 1644, Yangzhou remained under the control of the short-lived Southern Ming based in Nanjing. Qing forces led by Prince Dodo reached Yangzhou in the spring of 1645, and despite the heroic efforts of its chief defender, Shi Kefa, the city fell on May 20, 1645, after a brief siege. The Yangzhou massacre followed; Wang Xiuchu's contemporary account alleged that the number of victims was close to 800,000, but that number is certainly an exaggeration. Shi Kefa himself was killed by the Manchus when he refused to switch his allegiance to the Manchurian Qing regime."Horrid beyond description": The massacre of Yangzhou", in Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws, ed. Struve, Lynn A. ale University Press, 1998, . Pages 28–48. Han bannermen were responsible for most of the atrocities in Yangzhou but they were nevertheless labelled as Manchus by other Han.
The city's rapid recovery from these events and its great prosperity through the early and middle years of the Qing dynasty were due to its role as administrative center of the Lianghuai sector of the government salt monopoly. As early as 1655, the Dutch envoy Johan Nieuhof described the city of Yangzhoufu ( in his transcription):Johan Nieuhof, An embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, emperor of China: delivered by their excellencies Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keyzer, at his imperial city of Peking wherein the cities, towns, villages, ports, rivers, &c. in their passages from Canton to Peking are ingeniously described by John Nieuhoff; ... Englished and set forth with their several sculptures by John Ogilby, 1673, p.82
Famed at that time and since for literature, art, and the gardens of its merchant families, many of which were visited by the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors during their Southern Tours, the Qing-era Yangzhou has been the focus of intensive research by historians.
The Yangzhou riot in 1868 was a pivotal moment of Anglo-Chinese relations during late Qing China that almost led to war.Austin (2007), p. 129 The crisis was fomented by the scholar-officials of the city, who opposed the presence of foreign Christian missionaries there. The riot that resulted was an angry crowd estimated at eight to ten thousand who assaulted the premises of the British China Inland Mission in Yangzhou by looting, burning and attacking the missionaries led by Hudson Taylor. No one was killed, however several of the missionaries were injured as they were forced to flee for their lives. As a result of the report of the riot, the British consul in Shanghai, Sir Walter Henry Medhurst took seventy Royal Marines in a man-of-war and steamed up the Yangtze to Nanjing in a controversial show of force that eventually resulted in an official apology from Viceroy Zeng Guofan and financial restitution made to the injured missionaries.
Modern China From the time of the Taiping Rebellion (1853) to the beginning of the Reform Era (1980) Yangzhou was in decline, due to war damage, neglect of the Grand Canal as railways replaced it in importance, and stagnation in the early decades of the PRC. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, it endured eight years of Japanese occupation and was used by the enemy as a site for internment camps. About 1200 civilians of Allied nationalities (mostly British and Australian) from Shanghai were transported here in 1943, and located in one of three camps (A, B, and C). Camps B and C were closed down in September, 1943, after the second American-Japanese prisoner exchange, and their inhabitants transferred back to Shanghai camps. Camp C, located in the former American Mission in the north-west of the city, was maintained for the duration of the war.Leck, Greg, Captives of Empire: The Japanese Internment of Allied Civilians in China Shandy Press, 2006; Antonia Finnane, Far From Where? Jewish Journeys from Shanghai to Australia (Melbourne University Press, 1999), 106–7.
Among early plans for railways in the late Qing was one for a line that would connect Yangzhou to the north but this was jettisoned in favor of an alternative route. The city's status as a leading economic center in China was never to be restored. Not until the 1990s did it begin to regain some semblance of prosperity, benefitting from national economic growth and a number of targeted development projects. With the canal now partially restored, and excellent rail and road connections, Yangzhou is once again an important transportation and market center. It also has some industrial output, chiefly in cotton and textiles. In 2004, a railway linked Yangzhou for the first time with Nanjing.
Geography