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Sichuan

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Coordinates: 30°0′N 103°0′E / 30°N 103°E / 30; 103

Sichuan (help·info) (Chinese: 四川; pinyin: Sìchuān; Postal map spelling: Szechwan and Szechuan) is a province (shěng) in Southwestern China with its capital in Chengdu. The current name of the province, 四川 (Sìchuān), is an abbreviation of 四川路 (Sì Chuānlù), or "Four circuits of rivers", which is itself abbreviated from 川峡四路 (Chuānxiá Sìlù), or "Four circuits of rivers and gorges", named after the division of the existing circuit into four during the Northern Song Dynasty.

History

The province and its vicinity were the cradle of unique local civilizations, which can be dated back to at least the fifteenth century BC (coinciding with the later years of Shang Dynasty). Beginning from the ninth century BC, Shu (today Chengdu) and Ba (today Chongqing City) emerged as cultural and administrative centers where two rival kingdoms were established.

Shu's existence was unknown until an archaeological discovery in 1986 at a small village named Sanxingdui (三星堆 Sān Xīng Duī) in Guanghan County. It is believed to be an ancient city of the Shu Kingdom, where excavations have yielded invaluable archaeological information.

Although the Qin Dynasty destroyed the civilizations of Shu and Ba, their cultures were preserved and inherited by people in Sichuan until today. The Qin government accelerated the technological and agricultural advancements of Sichuan making it comparable to that of the Huang He (Yellow River) Valley. The Dujiangyan Irrigation System, built in the 3rd century BC under the inspection of Li Bing, was the symbol of modernization of that period. Composed of a series of dams, it redirected the flow of the Min Jiang, a major tributary of the Yangtze River, to fields, relieving the damage of seasonal floods. The construction and various other projects greatly increased the harvest of the area which thus became the main source of provisions and men for Qin's unification of China.

Various ores were abundant. Adding to its significance, the area was also on the trade route from the Huang He Valley to foreign countries of the southwest, especially India.

The area's military importance matches its commercial and agricultural significance. As a basin surrounded by the Himalayas to the west, the Qinling Range to the north, and mountainous areas of Yunnan to the south, Sichuan is prone to fog. Since the Yangtze flows through the basin and is thus upstream of eastern China, navies could be easily sailed downstream. Therefore Sichuan was the base for numerous amphibious military forces and also served as the refuge of Chinese governments throughout history. A few independent regimes were founded; the most famous was Shu Han of the Three Kingdoms. The Jin Dynasty first conquered Shu Han on its path of unification. During the Tang Dynasty, it was a battlefront against Tibet.

A stone-carved pillar-gate, or que (闕), 6 m (20 ft) in total height, located at the tomb of Gao Yi in Ya'an, Sichuan, built during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD)

The Leshan Giant Buddha, built during the latter half of the Tang Dynasty (618–907).

The Southern Song Dynasty established coordinated defenses against the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in Sichuan and Xiangyang. The line of defense was finally broken through after the first use of firearms in history during the six-year siege of Xiangyang, which ended in 1273.

During the Ming Dynasty major architectural works were created in Sichuan. Bao'en Temple is a well-preserved fifteenth century monastery complex built between 1440 and 1446 during Emperor Yingzong's reign (1427-64) in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Dabei Hall enshrines a thousand-armed wooden image of Guanyin and Huayan Hall is a repository with a revolving sutra cabinet. The wall paintings, sculptures and other ornamental details are masterpieces of the Ming period.

The Qing general Zhang Xianzhong, nicknamed Yellow Tiger, conquered Sichuan Province in the middle of the 17th century. A landslide dam on the Dadu River caused by an earthquake gave way on 10 June 1786. The resulting flood killed 100,000 people.

In the 20th century, as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan had all been lost to the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the capital of the Republic of China had been temporary relocated to Chongqing. The difficulty of accessing the region overland from the eastern China and the foggy climate hindering the accuracy of Japanese bombing of the Sichuan basin and the city of Chongqing made the region the stronghold of Chiang Kai-Shek's Guomindang government during 1938-45.

As the Second Sino-Japanese War was soon followed by the resumed Chinese Civil War, and the cities of the east fell to the Communists one after another, the Guomindang government again tried to make Sichuan its stronghold on the mainland. Chiang Kai-Shek himself flew to Chongqing from Taiwan in November 1949 to lead the defense. But the same month Chongqing fell to the Communists, followed by Chengdu on 10 December. The Guomindang general Wang Sheng wanted to stay behind with his troops to continue anticommunist guerilla war in Sichuan, but was recalled to Taiwan, many of his soldiers making their way there as well, via Burma.

On Monday, 12 May 2008 at 2:28:01 PM local time, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9/8.0 hit just 79 km northwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu. As of 14 May, the official Xinhua news agency reported: 14,463 people were dead, another 14,051 were missing, 25,788 were buried in the debris and 64,746 had been injured, On 31 May, the death toll was updated to 68,467 in Sichuan with a further ~17,000 people missing, and 354,045 injured.

History of provincial borders

Sichuan's borders have remained relatively constant for the past 500 years. However, the western Xikang province of the Republic of China was annexed to Sichuan in 1955. Since 1955 until 1997 it had been China's most populous province, hitting 100 million shortly after the 1982 Census figure of 99,730,000. This changed in 1997 when the city of Chongqing as well as the surrounding counties of Fuling and Wanxian were split off into the new Chongqing Municipality. The new municipality was formed to spearhead China's effort to develop its western provinces, as well as to coordinate the resettlement of residents from the reservoir areas of the Three Gorges Dam project. In 1997 when Sichuan split, the sum of the two parts was recorded to be 114,720,000 people, the only province ever to have reached 100 million people in China. Furthermore, as a subnational entity, it has only been exceeded by the former Russian SFSR of the Soviet Union and Uttar Pradesh of India.

Subdivisions

Sichuan consists of eighteeen prefecture-level cities and three autonomous prefectures:

Geography

Larix potaninii in autumn colour, Huluhai, Sichuan

The area lies in the Sichuan basin and is surrounded by the Himalayas (喜玛拉雅山脉）to the west, Qinling (秦岭) range to the north, and mountainous areas of Yunnan to the south. The Yangtze River flows through the basin and thus is upstream to areas of eastern China. The Minjiang River in central Sichuan is a tributary of the upper Yangtze River, which it joins at Yibin. Plate tectonics formed the Longmen Shan fault, which runs under the north-easterly mountain location of the 2008 earthquake.

The climate is highly variable. The Sichuan Basin (including Chengdu) in eastern half of the province experiences a subtropical monsoon climate with long, warm to hot, humid summers and short, cool to cold, dry and cloudy winters, with China's lowest sunshine totals. The western areas have a mountainous climate characterized by very cold winters and mild summers, with plentiful sunshine. The southern part of the province, including Panzhihua, has a sunny, subtropical climate with very mild winters and hot summers.

Sichuan borders Qinghai province to the northwest, Gansu province to the north, Shaanxi province to the northeast, Chongqing municipality to the east, Guizhou province to the southeast, Yunnan province to the south, and Tibet Autonomous Region to the west.

Politics

The politics of Sichuan is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China.

The Governor of Sichuan is the highest ranking official in the People's Government of Sichuan. However, in the province's dual party-government governing system, the Governor has less power than the Sichuan Communist Party of China Provincial Committee Secretary, colloquially termed the "Sichuan CPC Party Chief".

Economy

The capital of Sichuan, Chengdu.

Sichuan has been historically known as the "Province of Abundance". It is one of the major agricultural production bases of China. Grain, including rice and wheat, is the major product with output that ranked first in China in 1999. Commercial crops include citrus fruits, sugar canes, sweet potatoes, peaches and grapeseeds. Sichuan also had the largest output of pork among all the provinces and the second largest output of silkworm cocoons in China in 1999. Sichuan is rich in mineral resources. It has more than 132 kinds of proven underground mineral resources of which reserves of 11 kinds including vanadium, titanium, and lithium are the largest in China. The Panxi region alone possesses 13.3% of the reserves of iron, 93% of titanium, 69% of vanadium, and 83% of the cobalt of the whole country.

Sichuan is one of the major industrial centers of China. In addition to heavy industries such as coal, energy, iron and steel, the province has also established a light industrial sector comprising building materials, wood processing, food and silk processing. Chengdu and Mianyang are the production centers for textiles and electronics products. Deyang, Panzhihua, and Yibin are the production centers for machinery, metallurgical industries, and wine, respectively. Sichuan's wine production accounted for 21.9% of the country’s total production in 2000.

Great strides have been made in developing Sichuan into a modern hi-tech industrial base, by encouraging both domestic and foreign investments in electronics and information technology (such as software), machinery and metallurgy (including automobiles), hydropower, pharmaceutical, food and beverage industries.

The auto industry is an important and key sector of the machinery industry in Sichuan. Most of the auto manufacturing companies are located in Chengdu, Mianyang, Nanchong, and Luzhou.

Other important industries in Sichuan include aerospace and defense (military) industries. A number of China's rockets (Long March rockets) and satellites were launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, located in the city of Xichang.

Sichuan's beautiful landscapes and rich historical relics have also made the province a major center for tourism.

The Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam ever constructed, is being built on the Yangtze River in nearby Hubei province to control flooding in the Sichuan Basin, neighboring Yunnan province, and downstream. The plan is hailed by some as China's efforts to shift towards alternative energy sources and to further develop its industrial and commercial bases, but others have criticised it for its potentially harmful effects, such as massive resettlement of residents in the reservoir areas, loss of archeological sites, and ecological damages.

Sichuan's nominal GDP for 2009 was 1.415 trillion yuan (US$207 billion), equivalent to 17,380 RMB (US$2,545) per capital. In 2008, the per capita net income of rural residents was 4,121 yuan (US$593), up 16.2% from 2007. The per capita disposable income of the urbanites averaged 12,633 yuan (US$1,819), up 13.8% from 2007.

Foreign trade

According to the Sichuan Department of Commerce, the province's total foreign trade was US$22.04 billion in 2008, a year on year increase of 53.3 percent. Exports were US$13.1 billion, a year on year increase of 52.3 percent, while imports were US$8.93 billion, a year on year increase of 54.7 percent. These achievements were accomplished because of significant changes in China's foreign trade policy, acceleration of the yuan's appreciation, increase of commercial incentives and increase in production costs. The 18 cities and counties witnessed a steady rate of increase. Chengdu, Suining, Nanchong, Dazhou, Ya'an, Abazhou, and Liangshan all saw an increase of more than 40 percent while Leshan, Neijiang, Luzhou, Meishan, Ziyang, and Yibin saw an increase of more than 20 percent. Foreign trade in Zigong, Panzhihua, Guang'an, Bazhong and Ganzi remained constant.

Minimum wage

The Sichuan government raised the minimum wage in the province by 12.5 percent at the end of December 2007. The monthly minimum wage went up from 400 to 450 yuan, with a minimum of 4.9 yuan per hour for part-time work, effective Dec. 26 2007. The government also reduced the four-tier minimum wage structure to three. The top tier mandates a minimum of 650 yuan per month, or 7.1 yuan per hour. National law allows each province to set minimum wages independently, but with a floor of 450 yuan per month.

Economic and Technological Development Zones

• Chengdu Economic & Technological Development Zone
• Chengdu Export Processing Zone
• Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone
• Chengdu National Cross-Strait Technology Industry Development Park
• Mianyang New & Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone

Transportation

Expressways

On 3 November 2007, the Sichuan Transportation Bureau announced that the Sui-Yu Expressway was completed after three years of construction. After completion of the Chongqing section of the road, the 36.64 km expressway connected Cheng-Nan Expressway and formed the shortest expressway from Chengdu to Chongqing. The new expressway is 50 km shorter than the pre-existing road between Chengdu and Chongqing; thus journey time between the two cities was reduced by an hour, now taking two and a half hours. The Sui-Yu Expressway is a four lane overpass with a speed limit of 80 km/h. The total investment was 1.045 billion yuan.

Demographics

Tibetans as a main ethnic minority group in Sichuan.

The majority of the province's population is Han Chinese, who are found scattered throughout the region. Significant minorities of Tibetans, Yi, Qiang and Naxi reside in the western portion. The Eastern Lipo, included with either Yi people or Lisu people as well as the A-Hmao also are among the ethnic groups of the provinces. Sichuan was China's most populous province before Chongqing was carved out of it, making Henan the current most populous. However, when including migrants, Guangdong has a higher population than Henan.

It was the third most populous sub-national entity in the world, after Uttar Pradesh, India and the Russian SFSR until 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. It is also one of the only four to ever reach 100 million people (Uttar Pradesh, Russian RSFSR, Maharashtra, and Sichuan). It is currently 6th.

Culture

This section requires expansion.

The Li Bai Memorial, located at Zhongba Town of northern Jiangyou County in Sichuan Province, is a museum in memory of Li Bai, a Chinese poet in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), at the place where he grew up. It was prepared in 1962 on the occasion of 1,200th anniversary of his death, completed in 1981 and opened to the public in October 1982. The memorial is built in the style of the classic garden of the Tang Dynasty.

Languages

Most dialects of Chinese spoken in Sichuan, including the Chengdu dialect of the provincial capital, belong to the southwestern subdivision of the Mandarin group, and are therefore very similar to the dialects of neighboring Yunnan and Guizhou provinces as well as Chongqing Municipality. Typical features shared by many southwestern Mandarin dialects include the merger of the retroflex consonants /tʂ tʂʰ ʂ/ into the alveolar consonants /ts tsʰ s/, the merger of /n/ and /l/, as well as the merger of /ɤŋ iɤŋ/ into /ən in/.

The prefectures of Garzê and Ngawa (Aba) in western Sichuan are populated predominantly by ethnic Tibetans, who speak the Kham and Amdo dialects of Tibetan. The Qiang and other related ethnicities speak the Qiangic languages, which are part of the Tibeto-Burman languages. The Yi of Liangshan prefecture in southern Sichuan speak the Yi language, which is more closely related to Burmese; Yi is written using the Yi script, a syllabary standardized in 1974.

Cuisine

The Sichuanese are proud of their cuisine, known as one of the Four Great Traditions of Chinese cuisine, which now is famous all over the world. Szechuan cuisine is of "one dish, one shape, hundreds of dishes, hundreds of tastes", as the saying goes, to describe its acclaimed diversity. The most prominent traits of Sichuanese cuisine are described by four words: spicy, hot, fresh and fragrant. Two famous Sichuan chefs are Chen Kenmin and his son Chen Kenichi, who was Iron Chef Chinese on the television series "Iron Chef".

Education

Colleges and universities

• Chengdu Institute of Technology
• Sichuan University (Chengdu)
• Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (Chengdu)
• Southwest Jiaotong University (Chengdu)
• University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (Chengdu)
• Southwest University of Science and Technology (Mianyang)
• Sichuan Normal University (Chengdu)
• Southwest University for Nationalities (Chengdu)
• Sichuan Union University
• West China University of Medical Sciences
• Southwest University of Finance & Economics
• Sichuan Agricultural University
• Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine
• Sichuan Institute of Technology
• Southwest Institute of technology (Mianyang)
• Chengdu Institute of Information Technology
• Mianyang Economy & Technology College
• Neijiang Normal University
• Luzhou Medical College
• Sichuan University Of Physics
• Xihua University (Chengdu)

Collapse of schools during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake

See also: Allegations of corruption in the construction of Chinese schools, Collapse of schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake

During the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, a disproportionately high number of school structures collapsed, especially in rural areas of Sichuan, leading to allegations of corruption and promises by the government for an official inquiry. However, it remains unclear whether the allegedly shoddy construction was unique to Sichuan, as opposed to a nation-wide practice that only became visible in Sichuan due to the earthquake.

Executive vice governor, Wei Hong, on 20 November 2008 confirmed that 19,065 identified schoolchildren died, and more than 90,000 were dead or missing after the earthquake. He stated that 200,000 homes had been rebuilt, and 685,000 were under reconstruction, but 1.94 million households were still without permanent shelter. 1,900 schools had been reconstructed, with initial relocation of 25 townships, including Beichuan and Wenchuan, two of the most devastated areas. The government spent $441(amount most likely incorrect due to size of the amount) billion dollars on relief and reconstruction efforts.

Tourism

Giant pandas eating bamboo in Chengdu, Sichuan

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

• Dazu Rock Carvings, listed as property of the Chongqing municipality
• Huanglong Scenic and Historic Interest Area
• Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area
• Mount Emei Scenic Area, including Leshan Giant Buddha Scenic Area
• Mount Qincheng and the Dujiangyan Irrigation System
• Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries

Sports

Professional sports teams in Sichuan include:

• Chinese Basketball Association
  • None
• Chinese Football Association Super League
  • Chengdu Blades
• Chinese Volleyball League
  • Sichuan Volleyball Team
• China Table Tennis Super League
  • Sichuan Quan-Xing Table-Tennis Team

Twin states

• Washington, US (1982)
• Michigan, US (1982)
• Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan (1984)
• Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan (1985)
• South P'yŏngan, North Korea (1985)
• Midi-Pyrénées, France (1987)
• North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (1988)
• Leicestershire, England (1988)
• Piedmont, Italy (1990)
• Pernambuco, Brazil (1992)
• Tolna County, Hungary (1993)
• Valencian Community, Spain (1994)
• Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium (1995)
• Barinas State, Venezuela (2001)
• Friesland, Netherlands (2001)
• Almaty Province, Kazakhstan (2001)
• Mpumalanga, South Africa (2002)
• Jeollanam-do, South Korea (2004)

See also

• 2008 Sichuan Earthquake
• Eight Immortals from Sichuan
• The Good Person of Sezuan
• List of prisons in Sichuan

Footnotes

Economic data'

• Economic profile for Sichuan at HKTDC

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sichuan

• Sichuan Government website
• Sichuan travel guide from Wikitravel
• Sichuan Poverty Network

v • d • e Sichuan Province History • Politics • Economy • Music Sub-provincial cities Chengdu Prefecture-level cities Bazhong • Dazhou • Deyang • Guang'an • Guangyuan • Leshan • Luzhou • Meishan • Mianyang • Nanchong • Neijiang • Panzhihua • Suining • Ya'an • Yibin • Zigong • Ziyang Autonomous prefectures Ngawa • Garzê • Liangshan See also: List of Sichuan County-level divisions

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