Chongqing, China

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Other names of Chongqing:
Chongking (obsolete)

Short form: Yu (渝)

Chongqing (From Wikipedia)
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Chongqing (Simplified Chinese: 重庆; Traditional Chinese: 重慶; Hanyu Pinyin: Chóngqìng; Wade-Giles: Ch'ung-ch'ing; Postal System Pinyin: Chungking) is the largest and most populous of the People's Republic of China's four provincial-level municipalities, and the only one in the less densely populated western half of China. The municipality of Chongqing has a population of 32,355,000 (2004), most of them living outside the urban area of Chongqing proper, over hundreds of square miles of farmland. The population of the urban area of Chongqing proper was estimated at 3.4 million in 2004, ranking approximately as the 10th largest urban area of China. Including the unregistered migrants from the countryside, the population of the urban area could be as high as 7.5 million.

The municipal abbreviation, Yú (渝), was approved by the State Council on April 18, 1997. Yu had previously been used by the Kuomintang. It is the old name of a part of the Jialing River that runs through Chongqing with the Yangtze.

History

Chongqing is said to be the semi-mythical State of Ba that began in 11th century BC, when the Ba people began living here until they were destroyed by the State of Qin in 316 BC. The Qin emperor ordered a new city to be constructed, called Jiang (江州) and Chu Prefecture (楚州).

In 581 AD (Sui Dynasty), Chongqing was renamed to Yu Prefecture (渝州).

In 1102, the city was renamed Gong Prefecture.

In 1189, when Prince Zhao Dun of the Southern Song Dynasty was first made a king then crowned as Emperor Guangzong, he commented that it was "double/repeated happy celebration" (雙重喜慶), so renamed Yu Prefecture to Chongqing Subprefecture.

In 1362 (Yuan Dynasty), Ming Yuzhen, a peasant rebel leader, established Daxia Kingdom at Chongqing for a short time.

In 1621, another short-lived kingdom of Daliang was established there.

In 1891, Chongqing became the first inland commerce port open to foreigners.

Since 1929, Chongqing was a municipality of the Republic of China. Chongqing was the provisional capital of the government of Chiang Kai-shek during the Second Chinese-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945 and was heavily bombed by the Japanese Air Force, called "Bombing of Chongqing". It holds the distinction of being the most bombed city in history. During the war a lot of factories and universities from eastern China were moved to Chongqing and surrounding areas, transforming it from an inland port to a heavy-industrial city.

In 1954, the municipality was reduced to a provincial city of the People's Republic.

For three years, Chongqing had been a sub-provincial city of Sichuan Province, until March 14, 1997, as decided in the Eighth National People's Congress, the original Chongqing City was merged with the neighbouring Fuling, Wanxian, and Qianjiang that had been governed by Chongqing City on behalf of the province since September of the previous year. These four prefecture-level entities were all abolished as distinct administrative divisions and formed one new Chongqing Municipality that contained 30,020,000 people in their 43 former counties (without intermediate political levels), to spearhead China's effort to develop its western regions as well as to coordinate the resettlement of refugees from the Three Gorges Dam project. The first official ceremony took place on June 18 of that year.

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• First Interactive Maps of China
• Accurate information on streets and highways of most major cities in China.  Relative lack of information on rural areas.  As many other maps of China, it has difficulties catching up with the extreme speed of infrastructure construction. Some erroneous information on roads, for instance, a few highways are not actually highways.
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