Transport

The new Zhenjiang Railway StationZhenjiang is located in the convenient Yangtze River Delta transport corridor, at the crossroads of the Grand Canal and the Yangtze, and between the Shanghai and Nanjing economic regions. The Port of Zhenjiang is the third largest port on the Yangtze. The city has two Yangtze River crossings. The Runyang Yangtze River Bridge complex, which has one of the one of the longest suspension bridge spans in the world, connects to Yangzhou. The Taizhou Yangtze River Bridge, one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world, connects Yongzhong with Taizhou.Rail[edit]Zhenjiang has been connected by rail since 1906, at the completion of the Nanjing-Shanghai Railway. The railway was extended to Beijing after the completion of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in 1960, connecting Zhenjiang to China's political and commercial hubs. The primary railway station was Zhenjiang West Railway Station, which was demolished in 2004 due to congestion it caused in the city centre. Since then Zhenjiang Railway Station has served as the city's principal railway station. Since April 2010, Zhenjiang has been on the route of the Shanghai-Nanjing Intercity Rail, the first high-speed rail with a design speed of over 300 km/h (186 mph) to serve the city. In 2011, the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway was completed. Trains on the line stop at Zhenjiang South Railway Station. The two high-speed lines have reduced travel time between Zhenjiang and Shanghai to under an hour, and travel time to Beijing to under five hours. Rail service to Shanghai is frequent - averaging one train in less than half an hour.[13]Air[edit]Zhenjiang does not have a commercial airport within its city limits, although there is a military airfield, Zhenjiang Dalu Airport (镇江大路机场), which may open for regional flights in the future. Zhenjiang city centre is 62 km (39 mi) away from Changzhou Benniu Airport, about one-hour drive (80 km) away from Nanjing Lukou International Airport via Nanjing Provincial Highway 243, and approximately two-hour (143 km) drive away from Sunan Shuofang International Airport. Check-in facilities are available for Lukou Airport in the New Zhenjiang Bus Station (镇江汽车新站).[14]Roadways[edit]Zhenjiang is on the route of Beijing-Shanghai Expressway, and China National Highway 312.Public transport[edit]As of 2014[update], Zhenjiang had an extensive number of bus routes - numbering nearly one hundred. Since 2012 the city's entire fleet of city buses are equipped with GPS and are managed centrally through a "smart transport network system."[14]

Demographics

As in Nanjing, Zhenjiang's old Wu dialects have been entirely supplanted by a dialect of Eastern Mandarin. It is incomprehensible to the residents of neighboring Changzhou, whose dialect remains a form of Taihu Wu.

History

Zhenjiang was the seat of feudal domains from the 8th century BC onwards, under the names Yi, Zhufang, and Guyang. After it was captured by the First Emperor of the Qin in 221 BC, it became a county seat and was given the name Dantu. A Chinese legend holds that the site's fengshui was so advantageous that the First Emperor ordered 3000 prisoners to dig a tunnel through one of Zhenjiang's hills to dissipate its qi. It became a prefectural seat during the middle of the 3rd century BC.The Sui took the city in AD 581 and made it an important garrison on the lower Yangtze, the source of its present name. In 595, it was made a commandery seat. Its importance grew with the construction of the Grand Canal, after which it served as the chief collection and transit center for the grain tax paid by the farmers of the Yangtze delta. The city flourished from the 10th to 13th centuries, when it produced fine silks, satins, and silverware for the Song emperors. The 11th-century scientist and statesman Shen Kuo composed his 1088 Dream Pool Essays during his retirement in a garden estate on the outskirts of the city. It was taken by the Mongolians during their 1275 campaign against the Song capital at Hangzhou. Under the Yuan, some Nestorian Christians were reported living in the city. The city fell to Xu Da on 17 March 1356. The Southern Ming placed the town under Zheng Zhifeng, brother of Zheng Zhilong and favorite uncle of Koxinga, although he was fooled into wasting most of his ammunition against a feint and abandoned the city to the Qing on 1 June 1645.Under the Qing, Zhenjiang was a city of half a million surrounded by a circuit of brick city walls up to 35 feet (11 m) high. It was captured by the British on 21 July 1842 during the First Opium War and after a fierce resistance, leaving the path open to Nanjing and prompting a concessionary treaty to avoid its loss. A decade later, massive floods of the Yellow River altered its course north of Shandong and closed the northern path of the Grand Canal. Soon after, the town was sacked by the Taiping rebels in 1853. It was recaptured by the Qing in 1858 and opened as a treaty port in 1861. Into the 1870s, Chaozhou merchants used their connections in Zhenjiang to make it a regional distribution center for opium purchased from the foreign merchants in Shanghai; when David Sassoon attempted to avoid taxation by delivering his cargoes directly to the opium merchants in Zhenjiang, the Chinese organized to intimidate his customers and then bought out his failed organization. The population was estimated at 168,000 in 1904.The southern part of the Grand Canal was obstructed in the early 20th century, although by that point the city was connected by rail to Shanghai and Nanjing. From 1928 to 1949, while Nanjing served as the capital of the Republic of China, Zhenjiang served as the provincial capital for Jiangsu. During World War II, the city fell to Japan's Shanghai Expeditionary Army in the morning of 8 December 1937, shortly before the capture of Nanjing, but local resistance to the Japanese is still celebrated among the Chinese. When the Communists won the Chinese Civil War and relocated the capital to Beijing, Nanjing resumed its role as Jiangsu's capital.Zhenjiang is still one of China's busiest ports for domestic commerce, serving as a hub for trade among Jiangsu, Anhui, and Shanghai. The trade mostly consists of grain, cotton, oils, and lumber. The other main industries are mostly in the field of food processing and paper pulp manufacturing.