Everything about Sichuan Province totally explained
(;
Postal map spelling:
Szechwan and
Szechuan) is a
province in western
China with its capital at
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 territory of 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.
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. In the 20th century, the foggy climate hindered the accuracy of
Japanese bombing of the basin and the city of
Chongqing, where the capital of the
Republic of China had been relocated during
World War II.
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.
Sichuan's borders have remained relatively constant for the past 500 years. This changed in 1997 when the city of Chongqing as well as the surrounding towns of
Fuling and
Wanxian were formed into the new
Chongqing Municipality. The new municipality was formed to spearhead China's effort to develop its western regions as well as to coordinate the resettlement of residents from the reservoir areas of the
Three Gorges Dam project.
On Monday,
May 12,
2008 at 2:28:01 PM local time,
an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9/8.0 hit just 90km northwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu. As of
May 14, 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
May 22, the death toll was updated to 50,651 in Sichuan with a further 32,361 people missing, and 277,028 injured.
Subdivisions
Sichuan consists of eighteen
prefecture-level cities and three
autonomous prefectures:
The eighteen prefecture-level cities:
Geography
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, proceeding 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.
Bordering provinces:
Chongqing Municipality,
Tibet Autonomous Region,
Qinghai,
Gansu,
Shaanxi,
Guizhou and
Yunnan.
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
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, 83% of cobalt of the whole country.
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Sichuan is one of the major industrial bases of China. In addition to heavy industries such as coal, energy, iron and steel industry, the province has established a light manufacturing sector comprising building materials, wood processing, food and silk processing.
Chengdu and
Mianyang are the production bases for textiles and electronics products.
Deyang,
Panzhihua, and
Yibin are the production bases for machinery, metallurgy industries, and wine respectively. The wine production of Sichuan accounted for 21.9% of the country’s total production in 2000. Great strides have been achieved in accelerating the development of 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 important and a key sector of the machinery industry in Sichuan. Most of the auto manufacturing companies are located in Chengdu, Mianyang,
Nanchong, and
Luzhou (External Link). Other important industries in Sichuan include
aerospace and defense (military) industries. A number of China's rockets (
Long March rockets) and
satellites has been 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 into 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 a Chinese effort to shift towards alternate energy sources and to further develop its industrial and commercial bases but others have criticised it for its potential harmful effects, such as massive resettlement of residents in the reservoir areas, loss of archeological sites, and ecological damage.
Sichuan's nominal GDP for 2006 was 863.8 billion yuan (US$111.6 billion), equivalent to 10,574 RMB (US$1370) per capita. In 2006, the per capita net income of rural residents reached 3,013 yuan (US$350), up 7.5% year-on-year. The per capita
disposable income of the urbanites averaged 9,350 yuan (US$1,048), up 11.5% year-on-year.
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Demographics
The majority of population is
Han Chinese, who are found scattered throughout the province. Significant minorities of
Tibetans,
Yi,
Qiang and
Naxi reside in the western portion. 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 3rd most populous sub-national entity in the world, after the
Uttar Pradesh,
India and the
Russian SFSR until 1991 when the
Soviet Union was dissolved, as well as only 1 of 4 (Uttar Pradesh, Russian RSFSR,
Maharashtra, and Sichuan) to ever reach 100 million people. It is
currently 6th.
Culture
The
Li Bai Memorial, located at his birthplace,
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). 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 the
Chinese language 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 neighbouring
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.
Colleges and universities
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)
Tourism
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
Chinese Football Association Super League
Chinese Volleyball League
China Table Tennis Super League
Twin states
Washington (state), USA (1982)
Michigan, USA (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)Further Information
Get more info on 'Sichuan Province'.
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