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.
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 (t 邗溝, s 邗沟, 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 486 BC. 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 12 m (39 ft) 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 government—also known as Guangling—was 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 (杜充, 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. 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 9 km (5.6 mi) 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. 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 (Jamcefu in his transcription):
This Trade alone has so very much enrich'd the Inhabitants of this Town, that they have re-built their City since the last destruction by the Tartars, erecting it in as great splendor as it was at first.
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. 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.
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
Yangzhou is located on a plain north of the Yangtze. The Grand Canal, also known as the Jing-Hang Canal, crosses the prefecture-level from the north to the south; its modern route passes through the eastern outskirts of Yangzhou's main urban area, while its old route runs through the city center. Other major bodies of water within the prefecture-level city include the Baoshe River, Datong River, Beichengzi River, Tongyang Canal, Xintongyang Canal, Baima Lake, Baoying Lake, Gaoyou Lake and Shaobo Lake.
Like much of the entire prefecture-level city, Yangzhou's main urban area (the "city proper") is criss-crossed by an intricate network of canals and small lakes. The historic city center (the former waled city) is surrounded by canals on all sides: the Old Grand Canal forms its eastern and southern boundaries; the City Moat Canal runs along the former walled city's northern edge, connecting the Old Grand Canal with the Slender West Lake; the Erdaohe Canal runs along the old city's western edge, from the Slender West Lake to the Lotus Flower Pond (Hehuachi), which in its turn is connected by the short Erdaogou canal with the Old Grand Canal. It is possible to sail a small water craft from the Thin West Lake, via the Erdaohe, the Hehua Pond, and the Erdaogou into the Old Grand Canal.
Climate
Yangzhou has a subtropical monsoon climate with humid changeable wind; longer winters for about 4 months, summers 4 months and shorter springs and autumns, 2 months respectively; frost-free period of around 240 days and annual average sunshine of around 1,912 hours.
The mean annual temperature is 16.2 °C (61.2 °F) annually, with an annual average daily maximum temperature of 20.7 °C (69.3 °F) and an annual average daily minimum temperature of 12.4 °C (54.3 °F). The normal monthly mean 24-hour temperature ranges from 2.8 °C (37.0 °F) in January to 28.4 °C (83.1 °F) in July.
The annual average precipitation is 1,099.9 mm (43.30 in), and about 59.1% of rainfall is concentrated in the summer. The rainy season known as "plum rain season" usually lasts from mid-June to mid-July. During this season, the plums are ripening, hence the name plum rain. Extreme temperatures since 1951 has ranged from −17.7 °C (0 °F) on 6 January 1955 to 40.6 °C (105 °F) on 14 August 2022 during the 2022 China Heatwave.
Transportation
Yangzhou has one Yangtze River crossing, the Runyang Yangtze River Bridge complex, which has one of the longest suspension bridge spans in the world, and carries the G4011 Yangzhou–Liyang Expressway to Zhenjiang.