Pingyao County
37.201388888889112.15444444444Koordinaten: 37 ° 12 ' N, 112 ° 9' O
Pingyao (Chinese平遥/平遥, Pinyin Pingyao ) is a town in the province of Shanxi located in China with about 42,000 inhabitants, about 80 kilometers southwest of the provincial capital, Taiyuan. Pingyao is the capital of the homonymous district. In Europe, the city is known above all for their mingzeitlichen cityscape, which was added to the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1997.
Geography
Pingyao is located on the eastern edge of the northern Chinese Loess Plateau, at the junction of the basin of Taiyuan in the Schwemmgebietes the rivers Hui Ji and Liu gene. The climate is continental character, with long cold winters and mild to warm summers. West of the city flows the river Fen, one of the tributaries of the Huang He. The main part of the population make Han Chinese, other population groups are Hui Chinese, Manchus and Mongols.
History
The first evidence of human settlement in the region date back to the Paleolithic. The history of the city itself can be traced back to the 8th century BC to the time of the Western Zhou Dynasty at the turn of 9. In this time probably falls well as the construction of a mound as the first city fortifications. At the time of the Spring and Autumn Annals Pingyao belonged to the kingdom of Jin. This period also saw the first mention of the city falls under the name Zhongdu.
After several name changes during the Qin and Han period, the city was 424 AD in the year. under the rule of the Northern Wei its final name Pingyao, she has retained to this day. Since the division of China into 36 counties under the reign of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang Di in 221 BC Pingyao is also the district capital of the district. During the period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Pingyao was conquered in 960 during a war between the Northern Song and the Northern Han Dynasty, looted and burned.
1370, under the reign of Ming Emperor Hongwu, the city has been considerably extended and built the now larger city fortification wall with a core. Since then, Pingyao developed through the entire period of the Ming and Qing dynasties to a financial center of China and dominated in the second half of the 19th century the Chinese financial sector. With the rise of Chinese coastal cities in the wake of the economic influence of the Western colonial powers Pingyao but lost the late 19th and early 20th century, its importance, particularly in Hong Kong and Shanghai and recovered from this loss of meaning to this day. Because of the ensuing lack of financial strength and importance Pingyao but was largely spared from the destruction caused by modernization and the Cultural Revolution and was able to maintain its historically grown old town. Pingyao today has the longest completely preserved city walls mingzeitliche China, which is on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China since 1988, and still has a lot of historic courtyard houses on. 1997 Pingyao was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Circle Pingyao
With the division of China into administrative districts under the rule of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di the circle Pingyao was established and the city of Pingyao declared its capital. The district covers an area of 1260 km2 and has about 490,000 inhabitants today.