Liaoning
Description
Liaoning (Chinese: 辽宁; pinyin: Liáoníng ) is a province of China, located in the northeast of the country. The modern province was established in 1907 as Fengtian or Fengtien province and the name was changed to Liaoning in 1929. It was also known as Mukden province at the time, for the Manchu pronunciation of Shengjing, the former name of the provincial capital Shenyang. Under the Japanese-puppet Manchukuo regime, the province reverted to its 1907 name but the name Liaoning was restored in 1945 and again in 1954.
Liaoning is the southernmost part of Manchuria, the Chinese Northeast. It is also known in Chinese as "the Golden Triangle" from its shape and strategic location, with the Yellow Sea (Korea Bay and Bohai Sea) in the south, North Korea's North Pyongan and Chagang provinces in the southeast, Jilin to the northeast, Hebei to the southwest, and Inner Mongolia to the northwest. The Yalu River marks its border with North Korea, emptying into the Korea Bay between Dandong in Liaoning and Sinuiju in North Korea.
Name
The characters forming the province's modern Chinese name are 辽(Liáo) and 宁(níng). They are the simplified forms of the traditional characters 遼 and 寧, respectively. The first character literally means "far", "distant" but is actually a reference to the Liao River which flows through the territory. The second literally means "peace", "calm" but in such Chinese place names actually has the sense of "pacified", "made peaceful", here in reference to the turbulent situation of Manchuria in the late 1920s. In both English and Chinese, however, it is most common to gloss the name as the more literal "Peace on the Liao", the "Forever-Peaceful Liao, or even "Distant Peace".
The province's one-character abbreviation in Chinese is 辽.
History
Liaoning is located in the southern part of Northeast China. In the past, it formed part of Korean kingdoms as Gojoseon, Goguryeo, and Balhae, as well as Chinese polities such as the Yan State (of the Zhou Dynasty) and the Han Dynasty. It was also inhabited by non-Han peoples such as Xiongnu, Donghu, Xianbei. In addition, the Khitan, Jurchen, Mongol Empire and Northern Yuan ruled Liaoning.
The Ming Empire took control of Liaoning in 1371, just three years after the expulsion of the Mongols from Beijing. Around 1442, a defense wall was constructed to defend the agricultural heartland of the province from a potential threat from the Jurchen-Mongol Oriyanghan (who were Ming's tributaries) from the northwest. Between 1467 and 1468, the wall was expanded to protect the region from the northeast as well, against attacks from Jianzhou Jurchens (who were later to become known as the Manchu people). Although similar in purpose to the Great Wall of China, this "Liaodong Wall" was of a lower-cost design. While stones and tiles were used in some parts, most of the wall was in fact simply an earth dike with moats on both sides.
Despite the Liaodong Wall, the Manchus conquered Liaodong, or eastern Liaoning, in the early 17th century, decades before the rest of China fell to them. The Manchu dynasty, styled "Later Jin", established its capital in 1616–1621 in Xingjing (兴京), which was located outside of the Liaodong Wall in the eastern part of the modern Liaoning Province (today's ruins of Hetu Ala at Xilaocheng Village in Xinbin Manchu Autonomous County (新宾满族自治县), part of Fushun City). It was moved to Dongjing (east of today's Liaoyang, Liaoning), and finally in 1625 to Shengjing (now, Shenyang, Liaoning). Although the main Qing capital was moved from Shengjing to Beijing after it fell to the Qing in 1644, Shengjing retained its importance as a regional capital throughout most of the Qing era.
The Qing conquest of Liaoning resulted in a significant population loss in the area, as many local Chinese residents were either killed during fighting, or fled south of the Great Wall, many cities being destroyed by the retreating Ming forces themselves. As late as 1661, the Civil Governor (Fuyin) of Fengtian Province, Zhang Shangxian reported that, outside of Fengtian City (Shenyang), Liaoyang, and Haicheng, all other cities east of the Liaohe were either abandoned, or hardly had a few hundred residents left. In the Governor's words, "Tieling and Fushun only have a few vagrants". West of the Liaohe, only Ningyuan, Jinzhou, and Guangning had any significant populations remaining.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century (starting with laws issued in 1651 and 1653), the imperial Qing government recruited migrants from south of the Great Wall (notably, from Shandong) to settle the relatively sparsely populated area of Fengtian Province (roughly corresponding to today's Liaoning). Many of the current residents of Liaoning trace their ancestry to these seventeenth century settlers. The rest of China's Northeast, however, remained officially off-limits to Han Chinese for most of the Manchu era. To prevent the migration of Chinese to those regions (today's Jilin and Heilongjiang, as well as the adjacent parts of Inner Mongolia), the so-called Willow Palisade was constructed (ca. 1638 – ca. 1672). The Palisade encircled the agricultural heartlands of Fengtian, running in most areas either somewhat outside the old Ming Liaodong Wall, or reusing it, and separating it from the Manchu forests to the northeast and the Mongol grazing lands to the northwest.
Later on, the Qing government tried to stop the migrants flow to Fengtian or even to make some settlers return to their original places of residence – or, failing that, to legalize them. For example, an edict issued in 1704 commented on the recent Han Chinese settlers in Fengtian having failed to comply with earlier orders requiring them to leave, and asked them either to properly register and join a local defense group (保; bao), or to leave the province for their original places within the next ten years. Ten years later, naturally, another edict appeared, reminding of the necessity to do something with illegal migrants... In any event, the restrictive policy was not as effective as desired by the officials in Beijing, and Fengtian's population doubled between 1683 and 1734.
During the Qing Dynasty, Manchuria was ruled by three generals, one of whom, the General of Shengjing ruled much of modern Liaoning. In 1860, the Manchu government began to reopen the region to migration, which quickly resulted in Han Chinese becoming the dominant ethnic group in the region.
In the 20th century, the province of Fengtian was set up in what is Liaoning today. When Japan and Russia fought the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905, many key battles took place in Liaoning, including the Battle of Port Arthur and the Battle of Mukden, which was, to that point, the largest land battle ever fought. During the Warlord Era in the early twentieth century, Liaoning was under the Fengtian Clique, including Zhang Zuolin and his son Zhang Xueliang. The province first received its present name on January 29, 1929; the Zhongdong Railway Incident took place later that year. In 1931, Japan invaded and the area came under the rule of the Japanese-controlled puppet state of Manchukuo. The Chinese Civil War that took place following Japanese defeat in 1945 had its first major battles (the Liaoshen Campaign) in and around Liaoning.
At the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Liaoning did not exist; instead there were two provinces, Liaodong and Liaoxi, as well as five municipalities, Shenyang, Lüda (present-day Dalian), Anshan, Fushun, and Benxi. These were all merged into "Liaoning" in 1954, and parts of former Rehe province were merged into Liaoning in 1955. During the Cultural Revolution Liaoning also took in a part of Inner Mongolia, though this was reversed later.
Liaoning was one of the first provinces in China to industrialize, first under Japanese occupation, and then even more in the 1950s and 1960s. The city of Anshan, for example, is home to one of the largest iron and steel complexes in China. In recent years, this early focus on heavy industry has become a liability, as many of the large state-run enterprises have experienced economic difficulties. Recognizing the special difficulties faced by Liaoning and other provinces in Northeast China because of their heritage of heavy industry, the Chinese central government recently launched a "Revitalize the Northeast" Campaign.
Geography
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2014)It is possible to think of Liaoning as three approximate geographical regions: the highlands in the west, plains in the middle, and hills in the east.
The highlands in the west are dominated by the Nulu'erhu Mountains, which roughly follow the border between Liaoning and Inner Mongolia. The entire region is dominated by low hills.
The central part of Liaoning consists of a basin drained by rivers such as the Liao, Daliao, and their tributaries. This region is mostly flat and low-lying.
The eastern part of Liaoning is dominated by the Changbai Shan and Qianshan ranges, which extend into the sea to form the Liaodong Peninsula. The highest point in Liaoning, Mount Huabozi (1336 m), is found in this region.
Liaoning has a continental monsoon climate, and rainfall averages to about 440 to 1130 mm annually. Summer is rainy while the other seasons are dry.
Major cities:
- Shenyang
- Dalian
- Anshan
- Liaoyang
- Fushun
- Dandong
- Jinzhou
- Yingkou
Paleontology
Liaoning contains some of the foremost paleontological sites in the world. Known collectively as the Jehol Group, they include the Yixian Formation, Jiufotang Formation and Tiaojishan Formation. The name Jehol derives from a now defunct provincial division of that name, which covered an area that is now Western Liaoning, Eastern Hebei, and a small part of Inner Mongolia. Fossils were first found there during the 1920s. During the Japanese occupation of the area through the 1930s and early 1940s, more fossils were found, but records of them were lost after World War II ended. The area remained relatively unexplored until the 1990s. It was in 1996 that Liaoning made the headlines with the announcement of the discovery of Sinosauropteryx prima, the first example of a filamented "feathered" dinosaur. Sinosauropteryx prima was a small feathered meat-eating dinosaur, from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation. This discovery pushed the evolution of feathers back in time and showed that dinosaurs, not only birds, had feathers. It also showed a direct evolutionary link between theropod dinosaurs and modern birds.
Since then, dozens of ground-breaking finds have been discovered throughout the Jehol group. These including the earliest flower, earliest eutherian mammal, known as Eomaia, the earliest known metatherian, an intact embryo of a pterosaur, Repenomamus robustus—a 15 kg heavy mammal that ate dinosaurs, Sinornithosaurus millenii, as well as many birds and feathered dinosaurs. Discoveries such as Dilong paradoxus, another feathered theropod, date to the early Cretaceous Period. This is some 60 million years before Tyrannosaurus, and thus these discoveries push the evolution of feathers earlier than previously thought.
The Liaoning fossils are noted for their high degree of preservation—often including soft body tissues, which is rare. Aside from the famous birds and feathered dinosaurs, the Liaoning fossils include insects, fish, aquatic arthropods, and plants. The Liaoning deposit is widely considered to be the one of the world's premier fossil sites. The high level of preservation is believed to be due to how the animals died. The area was volcanically active, and large plumes of volcanic dust repeatedly covered the area, instantly killing and burying any living thing in the area. The extremely fine grain of the sediment and the chemical composition of the ash prevented the usual bacterial decay. In some specimens, extremely fine details can be seen such as the proboscis of the bee Florinemestruis used to drink nectar from the earliest flowers. In other specimens, colours are still visible, including stripes on fish and spots on turtles.
Religion
According to a 2012 survey only around 10% of the population of Liaoning belongs to organised religions, the largest groups being Buddhists with 5.5%, followed by Protestants with 2.1%, Muslims with 0.8% and Catholics with 0.1%.
The reports didn't give figures for other types of religion; around 90% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in Chinese folk religions (cults of nature deities and ancestors), Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religious sects.
The significant Manchu population, although strongly assimilated to the Han Chinese and practicing Chinese religions, also retains its own pure Manchu shamanism. At the same time, the local religion of the Han people throughout Manchuria has developed patterns of deities, ideas, and practices inherited from Manchu and Tungus shamanism, making it quite different from central and southern Chinese folk religion. The Mongol ethnic minority either follows the Mongolian folk religion and shamanism, or Tibetan Buddhism.
Further information: Religion in Northeast ChinaTourism
The Mukden Palace was the palace of the Qing Dynasty emperors before they conquered the rest of China and moved their capital to Beijing. Though not as large nor as well known as its counterpart (the Forbidden City) in Beijing, the Mukden palace is significant for its representation of palace architecture at the time, and has recently been included on the UNESCO World Heritage Site as an extension of the Imperial Palace site in Beijing.
In addition, three imperial tombs dating from the Qing Dynasty are located in Liaoning. These tomb sites have been grouped with other Ming and Qing Dynasties tombs (such as the Ming Dynasty Tombs in Beijing, and the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum in Nanjing) as a combined UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Wunu Mountain City, a Goguryeo site found in Huanren Manchu Autonomous County, is part of a combined UNESCO World Heritage Site that also includes sites in Ji'an, Jilin.
Benxi offers a boat ride though a large stalactite filled cave and underground river.
Anshan hosts the Jade Buddha Palace, the largest Buddha statue made of jade in the world.
Liaoyang, one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in northeast China, has a number of historical sites, including the White Pagoda (Baita), that dates to the Yuan Dynasty.
The port city of Dalian, located on the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, is a tourist destination in its own right, with beaches, resorts, zoos, seafood, shopping, Russian- and Japanese-era heritage architecture, and streetcars, a rare sight in China.
Dandong, on the border with North Korea, is a medium-sized city that offers a cross-river view of the North Korean city of Sinŭiju.
Bijia Mountain is a curious island which joins to the mainland at low tide by a land bridge.
