Nanjing

Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu Province in eastern China, on the lower Yangtze River. Its name means southern capital, given by the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, and it counts among the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China.

A walled settlement known as Jinling stood in the area by the 4th century BC. Sun Quan proclaimed himself emperor of Eastern Wu in 229 and made the town, then called Jianye, his capital; as Jiankang it later was the seat of the southern dynasties, and by the Liang dynasty it had more than 500 Buddhist monasteries. Zhu Yuanzhang took the throne here in 1368 as the Hongwu Emperor and enclosed the city with a brick wall, long stretches of which survive. The Ming court moved north in the early 15th century, and Nanjing was a capital again under the Republic of China from the late 1920s.

Nanjing brocade, or yunjin, is woven on tall wooden looms with silk and gold thread and was once reserved for imperial robes; the craft is on the UNESCO list of intangible heritage. Nanjing Panda Electronics makes communication equipment and consumer electronics, and Nanjing Iron and Steel rolls steel plate in the north of the city. The Port of Nanjing lets ocean-going ships sail up the Yangtze to the city, and the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, opened in the late 1960s, carries road and rail traffic on two decks.

The Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, the tomb of the Hongwu Emperor, lies on the slopes of Purple Mountain and belongs to the UNESCO site of the Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China, rests in a mausoleum higher up the same mountain, reached by a long granite stairway. Fuzimiao, the Confucius Temple on the Qinhuai River, stands in the old quarter where night markets and boat rides on the river have drawn crowds for centuries, and salted duck is the dish most linked with the city. Nanjing hosted the second Summer Youth Olympic Games.