In early Tang Dynasty, Han Yu, a famous prose writer, said: “Beginning from ancient times, Yanzhao (Hebei's substitute name) used to bring forth more brave and noble-minded persons than other places.” For thousands of years, innumerable outstanding persons were nurtured in the land of Hebei. They made great contributions to the prosperity of the Chinese nation at different times. In the meantime, many dramatic events took place in Hebei, which left great influence on Chinese history. Following are several examples.
In the Warring States Period, the state of Yan was a major power in the north. Its upper capital was in Ji (now Beijing), middle capital in Liangxiang (once belonged to Hebei and now belongs to Beijing) and lower capital in Yixian County, Hebei Province. It was from Yixian that Jingke (an assassin from the Yan) set off to assassinate the king of the Qin State. Seeing him off at the riverside of the Yi River, an artist known as Gao Jianli sang with passion:
“While the wind soughs and sighs over the chilly water of the Yi River, our hero will set off here and never return.” This moving story has been told for generations after generations. It was in Yixian that King Zhao Wang of the Yan State, to enlist talent persons, built the far-famed Golden Terrace. Yue Yi, a general who was highly praised by Zhuge Liang (a famous military advisor in the Three Kingdoms Period), was one of the talents enlisted by King Zhao Wang. He came from the Wei State. Commanding his troops in the war against the Qi, Yue Yi and his men took over 70 cities and towns in a short time. For his success, he was made the Changguo Prince of the Yan. After the state of Zhao moved its capital from Jinyang (Shanxi Province) to Handan (Hebei Province) in 386 B.C., and its capital remained there for 158 years. Among the rulers of the Zhao, King Wuling, the sixth one, was a reformer. To make his state strong, he urged his troops to learn from their opponents, the Hu people. For example, the Hu people, who rode horses in combat, wore tightly fit clothes and shot arrows so that they could move and fight quickly. By learning from them, the Zhao got strong in a short period of time. The Zhongshan State, originally named Xianyu, was established in central Hebei and near the Taihang Mountains in that period. A Chinese history book called Shiji (or Historical Records) says: “Many beautiful and precious products were made in Zhongshan.” In 1974, archeologists started to excavate the tombs to kings of the Zhongshan State. A large number of valuable relics were unearthed. From them people found that the Zhongshan culture and their productive forces had reached much high level.
Emperor Qin Shi Huang made China unified in 221 B. C. After that, he made many tours of inspection around the country. He visited Hebei three times. On a tour to eastern China in 215 B.C., he once reached Qinhuangdao and the areas nearby. In recent years a large group of construction ruins were found in the south of Mountain Nanshan of Beidaihe District. Later, they were proved to be the palace for Emperor Qin Shihuang.
Further more, Qinhuangdao got its name just because Emperor Qin Shihuang once visited it. In Chinese, “Qin” refers to the Qin Dynasty; “huang” means an emperor and “dao” an island. The name Qinhuangdao, in English, means an island that Emperor Qin Shihuang of the Qin Dynasty once visited. After Emperor Qin Shihuang, Emperor Liu Che of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Cao Cao of the Wei Dynasty and Emperor Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty also visited Qinhuangdao.
In the early years of Western Han (the Han Dynasty was divided into the West Han (206 B.C.-24 A.D.) and Eastern Han (25-220 A.D.)), Hebei's science and culture flourished together with a further development in agriculture and handicraft. Liu Sheng, Prince Jing of the Zhongshan State, was the son of Emperor Jing Di and brother of Emperor Wu Di (not from a same mother). He was made king of the Zhongshan in the 3rd year of the Qianyuan's reign of Emperor Jing Di (154 B.C.) and died in the fourth year of the Yuanding' reign of Emperor Wu Di (113 B.C.). His capital was set up in Nulu (present-day Dingzhou City). In June 1968, tombs to Liu Sheng and his wife Dou Wan were discovered in Mancheng County, Hebei Province. Excavated from the tombs are many gold, silver, bronze and jade articles, totaling over 10 thousand pieces. Among them, the two jade garments sewn with gold thread are the most precious and made the world surprised. In the reign of Emperor Wu Di, Dong Zhongshu, a great Confucian from Guangchuan (east of the present-day Zaoqiang County, Hebei Province), advocated a policy of “banning the hundred schools of thoughts and elevating alone Confucian teachings”. Later on, he was honored with the title of “Dong the second sage” (the first is Confucius, the founder of Confucianism). In the last years of the Western Han, class struggles became intensified and peasant uprisings broke out one after another. Liu Xiu, an aristocrat, expanded his own troops in Hebei and seized the fruits of peasant rebellions. He ascended the throne and became an emperor in Hao (now Baixiang County, Hebei Province) in A. D.25. His capital was set up in Luoyang (He'nan Province). It marked the beginning of the Eastern Han. Well organized and carefully planned, the large scale Yellow Turban Uprising led by Zhangjiao, a native of Julu, Hebei, put an end to the Eastern Han.
In a period of 300 years from the Three Kingdoms to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, China's feudal society made further progress. During this period, Yecheng, one of the three ancient capitals in Hebei (the other two: the capital of the Zhao State in Handan and the lower capital of the Yan State in Yixian), developed into a prosperous city. In the last years of the Eastern Han, Yecheng was the seat of a prefecture administered by Yuan Shao, military commander of Ji Zhou. After Yuan Shao was defeated by Cao Cao, it served as Cao's capital, and three terraces named respectively Jinfeng, Tongque and Bingjing were built there. During this period, a number of outstanding scientists were brought up in Hebei. Among them were Zu Chongzhi and Li Daoyuan. Zu Chongzhi, a mathematician and astronomer living in the period of the Southern Dynasties, who came from Fanyangqiu (now Laishui, Hebei), worked out the value of π(the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle) to be between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927. He established the Daming Calendar and determined the days of a tropical year to be 365.24281481, only 50 seconds less than the exact number of today. Li Daoyuan, a geographer of the Northern Dynasties, who came from Fanyang (now Zhuozhou, Hebei), wrote Shuijingzhu, a book about China's 1,253 rivers and its detailed geography.
The unification of China by the Sui Dynasty brought about the revival of economy and culture and the prosperity of the country. The Great Canal from Beijing to Hangzhou (Zhejiang Province) was cut. Its northern part passes through Hebei. The Anji Bridge (the oldest stone-arch bridge in the world) in Zhaoxian County was designed and built by the famous mason Li Chun. The Longxing Temple in Zhengding County began to be built (and rebuilt in the Song Dynasty).
The Tang Dynasty is in the heyday of Chinese feudal society. Many well-known persons from Hebei contributed greatly to the development of the splendid culture of the Tang. Wei Zheng, a statesman of the early Tang, who came from Xiaquyang (now Jinzhou City or Guantao County), was celebrated for his daring to criticize the faults of the emperor frankly. He helped Emperor Li Shimin control the country. In addition, he supervised the compiling of the history books about the Liang and Chen periods of the Southern Dynasties, and the Qi and Zhou periods of the Northern Dynasties, and the Sui Dynasty. Zhang Sui (or Yi Xing, his Buddhist name), a native of Julu, was an astronomer, who organized a survey and discovered for the first time in history the phenomenon that “stars move by themselves”. He invented “Dayan Calendar”, the accuracy of which surpassed all others before. Li Jifu, a native of Zhaojun (now Zhaoxian County), was a geographer, who wrote “The Yuanhe Annals of Prefectures and Counties”, which was the earliest general annals of Chinese geography now existing in China. Jia Dan, a geographer from Nanpi (now Nanpi County), drew “A Map of China and Its Neighboring Countries”. Li Baiyao, a native of Anping (now Anping County), wrote “The History of Northern Qi” in 50 volumes. In the Tang, classical Chinese literature entered its era of great prosperity, and many famous poets and writers were brought up in Hebei such as Lu Zhaolin, Gao Shi, Jia Dao, Li Changqing, Li Hua and Li Qi.
'After the collapse of the Tang, China entered the period of “Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms”. Zhao Kuangyin, a native of Zhuozhou (now Zhuozhou City in Hebei), founded the Song Dynasty and the separated situation came to an end. Hebei's ceramics industry, already thrived in the Tang, developed rapidly in the Song. Ceramics made in the Ding Kilns (in present-day Quyang County), the Xing Kilns (in present-day Neiqiu and Lincheng counties) and the Cizhou Kilns (in present-day Cixian County and Pengcheng County) were exquisite and known far and wide. The Jingxing Kilns (in present-day Jingxing County) found from 1989 to 2000, has undergone the Tang Dynasty, Five Dynasties, Song Dynasty and later dynasties. Because of the exquisite ceramics unearthed there, the ceramics circle of the country was shocked. This finding was regarded as “a big event at the turn of the century”. Experts praised the Jingxing Kilns as the fourth largest in Hebei.
In the early Yuan Dynasty, Guo Shoujing, a famous scientist from Xingtai, Hebei, revised the old Chinese calendar and produced the Shou Shi Li (Time-Telling Calendar), which was very precise. It had the same length for a year with the Gregorian calendar but was made 300 years earlier than the latter. He also completed the project of cutting the Tonghui River from Tongzhou to the Grand Capital, relieving the capital of water shortage. Originated from the folk literature, China's Yuanqu (a type of verse popular in the Yuan), which is composed of Sanqu and Zaju, progressed at an unprecedented rate in the Yuan Dynasty. Guan Hanqing, a native of Anguo, Hebei, was one of the creators of Yuanqu and a playwright as famous as Shakespeare in the drama field. He wrote over 60 plays in his life. And one of them, Snow in Midsummer, was translated into French as early as a century ago and became popular throughout the Europe.
The world-famed Great Wall of China was expanded in the Ming. In addition to the inner great walls (built earlier and further south than the Ming), Hebei has a total length of great walls as long as 2,000 km. Laolongtou, a place where the Great Wall meets the sea, Shanhaiguan, known as the “First Pass Under Heaven”, and the Great Wall at Jinshanling, the best section of the wall, were all constructed in that period.
In the heyday of the Qing Dynasty, Cao Xueqin, a writer with his family origin in Hebei, wrote the book A Dream of the Red Mansions. Being a great classic work of realism, it is a gem of Chinese literature and adds a glittering chapter to the world literature. During the Qing, the Imperial Summer Villa was built in Chengde, which served as the second political center for the Qing court. A large group of royal temples (namely the “Eight Outer Temples” in Chengde) was built, the royal hunting ground (or the “Mulan Weichang” hunting ground in Weichang County) was established and the Royal Tombs in Dongling (in Zunhua City) and in Xilin (in Yixian County) erected. All these are regarded as the cultural treasures of the Chinese nation. Some of them, the Imperial Summer Villa, the Eight Outer Temples, and the Royal Toms in Dongling and Xiling were listed as World Heritages by the World Heritage Commission of UNESCO.
In 1840, Britain invaded China by launching the Opium War. Thereafter, in the long struggle of over a hundred years against imperialism and feudalism, the Hebei people, side by side with other people of the country, fought heroically, playing an important role in the war of overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and the war of liberating China from imperialists and reactionaries.
In may 1948, the central organs of the Chinese Communist Party moved to Xibaipo, Pingshan County, Hebei Province, where the Party succeeded in leading the Chinese people in the War of Liberation. Xibaipo, setting a solid foundation for the establishment of the People's Republic of China and so added a brilliant chapter to the annals of Hebei Province. |
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