1.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
2.
Jiangsu
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Jiangsu, formerly romanized as Kiangsu, is an eastern-central coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. It is one of the provinces in manufacturing electronics and apparel items. Jiangsu is the third smallest, but the fifth most populous, Jiangsu has the second-highest GDP of Chinese provinces, after Guangdong. Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, Jiangsu has a coastline of over 1,000 kilometres along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze River passes through the southern part of the province. Since the Sui and Tang dynasties, Jiangsu has been an economic and commercial center. Cities such as Yangzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou and Shanghai are all major Chinese economic hubs, since the initiation of economic reforms in 1990, Jiangsu has become a focal point for economic development. It is widely regarded as Chinas most developed province measured by its Human Development Index, Jiangsu is home to many of the worlds leading exporters of electronic equipment, chemicals and textiles. It has also been Chinas largest recipient of foreign investment since 2006. Its 2014 nominal GDP was more than 1 trillion US dollars and its name is a compound of the first elements of the names of the two cities of Jiangning and Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is 苏, the character of its name. The state of Wu was subjugated in 473 BC by the state of Yue, Yue was in turn subjugated by the powerful state of Chu from the west in 333 BC. Eventually the state of Qin swept away all the other states, during the Three Kingdoms period, southern Jiangsu became the base of the Eastern Wu whose capital, Jiankang, is modern Nanjing. When nomadic invasions overran northern China in the 4th century, the court of the Jin Dynasty moved to Jiankang. Cities in southern and central Jiangsu swelled with the influx of migrants from the north, Jiankang remained as the capital for four successive Southern Dynasties and became the largest commercial and cultural center in China. The Tang Dynasty relied on southern Jiangsu for annual deliveries of grain and it was during the Song Dynasty, which saw the development of a wealthy mercantile class and emergent market economy in China, that south Jiangsu emerged as a center of trade. From then onwards, south Jiangsu, especially cities like Suzhou or Yangzhou, would be synonymous with opulence. Today south Jiangsu remains one of the richest parts of China, the Mongols took control of China in the thirteenth century. The Ming Dynasty, which was established in 1368 after driving out the Mongols who had occupied China, following a coup by Zhu Di, however, the capital was moved to Beijing, far to the north
3.
Anhui
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Anhui is a landlocked province of the Peoples Republic of China located in the eastern region of the country. The name Anhui derives from the names of two cities, Anqing and Huizhou, the abbreviation for Anhui is Chinese, 皖, pinyin, wǎn after the historical State of Wan, Mount Wan, and the Wan river. The province of Anhui was formed in the 17th century, before then, there was no coherent concept of Anhui. In terms of culture, Northern Anhui was firmly a part of the North China Plain together with modern-day Henan province, northern Jiangsu, Central Anhui was densely populated and constituted mostly of fertile land from the Huai River watershed. In contrast, the culture of Southern Anhui, bordered mostly along the Yangtze, was closer to Jiangxi, the hills of southeastern Anhui formed a unique and distinct cultural sphere of its own. In the 2007 book China Road, author Rob Gifford stated that the Chinese refer to Anhui as a big agricultural province, according to Gifford, this is an euphemism for a very poor area and that people have referred to Anhui as the Appalachia of China. The north of the province is part of the North China Plain while the areas are part of the Huai River watershed. Both of these regions are flat and densely populated. The land becomes more uneven further south, with the Dabie Mountains occupying much of southwestern Anhui, the Yangtze River finds its way through south Anhui in between these two mountainous regions. The highest peak in Anhui is Lotus Peak, part of Huangshan in southeastern Anhui and it has an altitude of 1873 m. Major rivers include the Huai River in the north and the Yangtze in the south, the largest lake is Lake Chaohu situated in the center of the province, with an area of about 800 km2. The southeastern part of the province near the Yangtze River has many lakes as well, as with topography, the province differs in climate from north to south. The north is more temperate and has more clearcut seasons, january temperatures average at around -1 to 2 °C north of the Huai River, and 0 to 3 °C south of the Huai River, in July temperatures average 27 °C or above. Plum rains occur in June and July and may cause flooding, major cities, Anhui is divided into sixteen prefecture-level divisions, all prefecture-level cities, The sixteen prefecture-level divisions of Anhui are subdivided into 105 county-level divisions. Those are in turn divided into 1,845 township-level divisions, the Politics of Anhui Province is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China. The Governor of Anhui is the official in the Peoples Government of Anhui. Agriculture in Anhui varies according to the zones that the province crosses. To the north of the Huai River, wheat and sweet potatoes are grown, while to the south of the Huai River it is rice, natural resources of Anhui include iron in Maanshan, coal in Huainan, and copper in Tongling
4.
Google
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Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph. D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares, and they incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4,1998. An initial public offering took place on August 19,2004, in August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabets leading subsidiary, will continue to be the company for Alphabets Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructure, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Googles core search engine. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, the new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, stated, a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience. Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier, alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google. com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites, including YouTube, Googles mission statement, from the outset, was to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful, and its unofficial slogan was Dont be evil. In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the phrase Do the right thing, Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. They called this new technology PageRank, it determined a websites relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine BackRub, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Originally, Google ran under Stanford Universitys website, with the domains google. stanford. edu, the domain name for Google was registered on September 15,1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4,1998. It was based in the garage of a friend in Menlo Park, craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee. The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. At least three other investors invested in 1998, Amazon. com founder Jeff Bezos, Stanford University computer science professor David Cheriton. Author Ken Auletta claims that each invested $250,000, early in 1999, Brin and Page decided they wanted to sell Google to Excite. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million, vinod Khosla, one of Excites venture capitalists, talked the duo down to $750,000, but Bell still rejected it. Googles initial public offering took place five years later, on August 19,2004, at that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024
5.
Xuzhou
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Xuzhou, known as Pengcheng in ancient times, is a major city in and the fourth largest prefecture-level city of Jiangsu Province, China. Its population was 8,577,225 at the 2010 census whom 2,623,066 lived in the area made of Quanshan, Gulou, Yunlong. Before the adoption of Hanyu Pinyin, the name was typically romanized as Suchow or Süchow, though it also appeared as Siu Tcheou, Hsu-chou, Hsuchow. Several Neolithic remains were discovered in Xuzhou, during 1960s and 1970s, the discovery at Dadunzi site in Sihu, Pizhou, whose relics, especially some painted potteries strongly prove the area belonged to Dawenkou culture. Besides, Gaohuangmiao site, Tongshan and Liulin site, Pizhou were also important contemporary remains, in the end of 1950s, remains of sacrificial activities to the God of Land at the Qiuwan site in Maocun, Tongshan was discovered. The archaeologists inferred that the date back to the Shang dynasty. Peng was once a chiefdom dominated the area of Xuzhou nowadays. Peng Zu, a legendary long-lived figure, is believed to be the first chief, Pengcheng, the ancient name of Xuzhou, was origins from the state of Peng, the word cheng means city in Chinese. Thus Pengcheng is the city of Peng or Peng city literally, during the Western Zhou, the people who were resident in the Huai River valley, northern Jiangsu and northern Anhui today, were two chiefdoms called Xuyi and Huaiyi at that time. Despite the relation between them and their origins are not quite clear for historians, there is no doubt that they were great threaten to the ancient states around them. Xuyi, namely Xu, made an alliance with Huaiyi, they battled with Zhous troop at irregular intervals, since the original territory was occupied by Lu, people of Xu migrated to the southern, while the capital at one time moved to the area of Xuzhou. The state of Song controlled Xuzhou along with Xus declining, then Pengcheng, in 573 BC, Chu and Zheng invaded Song and captured Pengcheng. As Jin was Songs ally, Duke Dao of Jin convened several leaders of states to fight against Chu. In the spring of 572 BC, Song recaptured Pengcheng, Song eventually exterminated by the State of Qi in 286 BC. Then Qi, Chu and Wei carved the former territory of Song up, Chu got the part in the north of the Huai River. Before that, Chu gradually expanded influence around Xuzhou after absorbing the nearby State of Cai in 447 BC, by the Warring States period, Xuzhou was firmly in the cultural and administrative sphere of Chu. The State of Chu moved to area in 278 BC after the Qin army captured its old capital, Ying, in modern Jingzhou. There were also two ancient states besides Song controlled the area of Xuzhou nowadays, Pi and Zhongwu
6.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
7.
Huai'an
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Huaian, formerly called Huaiyin until 2001, is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu province of Eastern China. It borders Lianyungang, Suqian to the north, Yancheng to the northeast, Yangzhou to the southeast, as of the 2010 census the municipality had 4,799,889 inhabitants, of whom 2,494,013 lived in the four urban districts. Most part of Huaian lies in Jianghuai Plain, which gives it a flat landscape, there are a few hills inside Xuyi. The highest altitude in Huaian is 200m, Huaian also has a large number of lakes and rivers. The most famous include The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and Huai River, Hongze Lake, the fourth largest freshwater lake in China is in the south of Huaian. On the south, it also has several smaller lakes, the prefecture-level city of Huaian administers 8 county-level divisions, including 4 districts and 4 counties. These are further divided into 127 township-level divisions, including 84 towns,33 townships and 10 subdistricts, Chinese mythology recounts that Yu the Great, the Chinese leader with a legendary ability for flood control techniques, was constantly taming the Huai River here in the Huaian area. Traces of the activities of ancient Chinese living about 5000 to 6000 years ago have been found in the area, the most famous of these is the Qingliangang Hill Civilization. The borough area had been developed, and led China in convenience of transportation and irrigation. The Gangou Drain connected the Yangtze River and the Huai River delta region, the Qian Road and Shan Road that traversed the region reached Southern and Northern China. Thus, Huaiyin was an area for several strong states in the Spring. The region was occupied by the Wu, Yue and Chu states, after the Qin Dynasty consolidated all states in China, the County System was promoted throughout China. Huaiyin County, Xuyi County, and Dongyang were built in the region, in the epoch of the West Han Dynasty, Huaipu County, Sheyang County and Fulin County were built. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, great improvements, especially in irrigation, were made to agriculture, in the later years of the East Han Dynasty, the Governor of Guanglin, Cheng Deng, built the Gaojiayang Levees. These 30 miles of levees kept out flood waters and protected farmlands and he also built the Pofu Pool for farm irrigation. Iron-made apparatus and bull-farming were widespread, although a few wars and battles took place, agriculture, transportation and logistics made fair progress. The highway built by the first Qin Emperor went through the region, handicrafts and business also developed during this period, while culture and the arts were at high levels, as well. The Ming Dynasty Ancestor Tomb is located in Xu Yi County, three of the Hong Wu emperors ancestors were buried here, his grandfather, his great grandfather, and his great great grandfather
8.
Google Maps
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Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. It offers satellite imagery, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets, real-time traffic conditions, Google maps began as a C++ desktop program designed by Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application, after additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a realtime traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005. The services front end utilizes JavaScript, XML, and Ajax, Google Maps offers an API that allows maps to be embedded on third-party websites, and offers a locator for urban businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Map Maker allows users to expand and update the services mapping worldwide. Much of the satellite imagery is no more than three years old and is updated on a regular basis. Google Maps uses a variant of the Mercator projection. The current redesigned version of the application was made available in 2013. Google Maps for mobile was released in September 2008 and features GPS turn-by-turn navigation, in August 2013, it was determined to be the worlds most popular app for smartphones, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it at least once. In 2012, Google reported having over 7,100 employees, Google Maps provides a route planner under Get Directions. Up to four modes of transportation are available depending on the area, driving, public transit, walking, in combination with Google Street View, issues such as parking, turning lanes, and one-way streets can be viewed before traveling. China mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Jordan, Lebanon, only public transit directions are provided for South Korea. All countries of mainland North and Central America are covered contiguously, all countries of mainland South America are covered. All countries including Trinidad and Tobago* are treated contiguously, all inhabited countries and territories in the Caribbean are covered, though in general there are no connections between islands. Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively, as the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and inserted into the page. When a user searches for a business, the results are downloaded in the background for insertion into the panel and map. Locations are drawn dynamically by positioning a red pin on top of the map images, a hidden IFrame with form submission is used because it preserves browser history. The site also uses JSON for data rather than XML
9.
Nanjing
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Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having served as the capitals of various Chinese dynasties, kingdoms and republican governments dating from the 3rd century CE to 1949. When being the capital of a state, for instance, the ROC, Nanjing is particularly known as Jinling or Ginling and the old name has been used since the Warring States period in Zhou Dynasty. Located in Yangtze River Delta area and the center of east China and it has also been awarded the title of 2008 Habitat Scroll of Honour of China, Special UN Habitat Scroll of Honour Award and National Civilized City. Nanjing boasts many high-quality universities and research institutes, with the number of universities listed in 100 National Key Universities ranking third, the ratio of college students to total population ranks No.1 among large cities nationwide. Nanjing is one of the three Chinese top research centers according to Nature Index, Key cultural facilities include Nanjing Library, Nanjing Museum and Art Museum. Archaeological discovery shows that Nanjing Man lived in more than 500 thousand years ago, zun, a kind of wine vessel, was found to exist in Beiyinyangying culture of Nanjing in about 5000 years ago. According to a legend quoted by an artist in Ming dynasty, Chen Yi, Fuchai, King of the State of Wu, later in 473 BCE, the State of Yue conquered Wu and constructed the fort of Yuecheng on the outskirts of the present-day Zhonghua Gate. In 333 BCE, after eliminating the State of Yue, the State of Chu built Jinling Yi in the part of present-day Nanjing. It was renamed Moling during reign of Qin Shi Huang, since then, the city experienced destruction and renewal many times. Nanjing was later the city of Danyang Prefecture, and had been the capital city of Yangzhou for about 400 years from late Han to early Tang. This city would soon play a role in the following centuries. Shortly after the unification of the region, the Western Jin dynasty collapsed, First the rebellions by eight Jin princes for the throne and later rebellions and invasion from Xiongnu and other nomadic peoples that destroyed the rule of the Jin dynasty in the north. Its the first time that the capital of the moved to southern part. During the period of North–South division, Nanjing remained the capital of the Southern dynasties for more than two and a half centuries, during this time, Nanjing was the international hub of East Asia. Based on historical documents, the city had 280,000 registered households, assuming an average Nanjing household had about 5.1 people at that time, the city had more than 1.4 million residents. As the old capital of China, many legendary stories happened here, residents in Nanjing all have the warmest affection for this city. Throughout glory and darkness in past centuries, Nanjing becomes a low-key city, GDP growth rate significantly exceeds the average rate in China for decades, which also maintain a fast developing model. Possibly the best preserved of them is the ensemble of the Tomb of Xiao Xiu, the period of division ended when the Sui Dynasty reunified China and almost destroyed the entire city, turning it into a small town
10.
Wuxi
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Wuxi is an old city in southern Jiangsu province, China. The city borders two other cities, Changzhou to the west and Suzhou to the east, and borders Zhejiang Province as well in the south. It also covers a coastline of the Yangtze River in the north, the modern name consists of the Chinese characters 无锡, literally translated no tin. According to a myth, at the time of the Warring States, while burying a pot to prepare food, a soldier found a stone plaque engraved with the words If there is tin there is an army, there will be conflict under heaven. If there is no tin, there will be peace under heaven, however, some scholars believe the name may have been originated from 吳墟, meaning the Ruins of Wu, due to Meicuns role as the original capital of the region. Another interesting theory suggests the name comes from a Chinese transcription of an indigenous Baiyue name honoring a bird deity. Others believe that the name could be derived from an ancient pronunciation of the name Fu Xi, Former translations to English include Wu-shi, Wushi and Wu-hsi. According to traditional Chinese historians, two Zhou princes, Taibo and Zhongyong, founded the first Chinese state in the area of Wuxi around the 11th century BC and this state of Wu had its first capital at Meili, generally thought to be the village of Meicun in Wuxi. Taibo and Zhongyong helped develop Wus agriculture and waterways and the area soon flourished, Taibo died without an heir, and Zhongyong succeeded him as King of Wu. His descendants were later officially enfeoffed by the Zhou court as vassals before declaring themselves full kings again during the Spring, a shrine to Taibo was set up in todays Meicun. Although the original structure was eventually destroyed in war, it has been rebuilt several times. A stone carved with sayings by Confucius can still be seen at the modern Taibo Shrine, the State of Wu became one of the strongest kingdoms during the Spring and Autumn period. Sunzi, who wrote the famous the Art of War came to Wu, Wu was considered one of the seven strongest kingdoms during this period. Some of Sunzis descendants still live in Sunxiang in Wuxi near the Plum Garden, however, Wu was later defeated by the State of Yue, todays Zhejiang and Fujian, which in turn was overthrown by the State of Chu and incorporated into Chu during the Warring States period. The cultural and economic center of the Wu area shifted to Suzhou after the reign of the first Qin dynasty emperor, Qin Shi Huang, during the Han dynasty, Wuxi was set up as a county by emperor Han Wudi. Historic records show that tin was discovered during the early Han era, soon, however, the tin was depleted. This was once believed to be the origin of the name Wuxi, the name was changed to Youxi, meaning having tin, during the Wang Mang conflicts period because Wang wanted to change the name. Agriculture and the industry flourished in Wuxi and the town became a transportation center under the early Tang Dynasty after the construction of the Grand Canal
11.
Changzhou
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Changzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province of China. It was previously known as Yanling, Lanling, Jinling, Changzhou is part of the highly developed Yangtze Delta region of China extending from Shanghai going northwest, which now has more than 36,000,000 inhabitants. Its total population was 4,592,431 inhabitants at the 2010 census whom 3,290,918 lived in the area made up of 5 urban districts. The agglomeration is now part of the Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou metropolitan area which has now more than 36,000,000 inhabitants, only second in China after the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone. The Ruins of Yancheng, comprise the remains of a city located in the Wujin district of Changzhou that was founded over 3000 years ago at the beginning of the Western Zhou dynasty. The earliest record of a settlement on the site of modern Changzhou is as a commandery founded in 221 BC at the beginning of the Qin Dynasty, during the interregnum between the Sui and Tang, the city of Piling was the capital of Shen Faxings short-lived Kingdom of Liang. Changzhou got its present name meaning ordinary prefecture in 589, following construction of the Grand Canal in 609, Changzhou became a canal port and transshipment point for locally-grown grain, and has maintained these roles ever since. The rural counties surrounding Changzhou are noted for the production of rice, fish, tea, silk, bamboo, during the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s, one of five palaces housing the leaders of the so-called Kingdom of Celestial Peace was constructed in Changzhou. Today the ruins of the Kings Palace can be found near the Peoples No.1 Hospital, in the 1920s, Changzhou started to attract cotton mills. The cotton industry got a boost in the late 1930s when businesses began relocating outside of Shanghai due to the Japanese occupation, unlike many Chinese cities, Changzhou continued to prosper even during the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76. Today it is an important industrial center for textiles, food processing, engineering, Changzhou has a wide range of temperature differences throughout the year. The prefecture-level city of Changzhou administers seven county-level divisions, including five districts, the city also has a number of prominent secondary schools, including the Changzhou Senior High School of Jiangsu Province. Changzhous traditional role has been that of a center and in particular a distribution center for agricultural produce. The city began to develop a cotton industry in the 1920s, and cotton mills were established in the late 1930s. The city has remained a center and the most important location in Jiangsu Province for weaving. It also has large food-processing plants as well as flour-milling, rice-polishing, after 1949 it also developed as a centre of the engineering industry. Qishuyan, some 10 kilometres southeast of Changzhou, has one of the largest locomotive, other engineering works in Changzhou produce diesel engines, generators, transformers along with agricultural and textile machinery. At the time of the Great Leap Forward in 1958 a steel plant was built to provide raw material for heavy industry
