Fengyang County () is a county in north-central

Anhui Province Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

, China. It is under the administration of

Chuzhou Chuzhou () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Anhui Province, China. It borders the provincial capital of Hefei to the south and southwest, Huainan to the west, Bengbu to the northwest, and the province of Jiangsu to the east. According to ...

, a

prefecture-level city A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure. During the Republican era, many of Chi ...

. The county was home to 765,600 people as of 2013.

Administrative divisions

Fengyang County is divided into 14

towns A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an or ...

and 1

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, ...

. The county seat is in Fucheng Town.

14 Towns

The county is home to the following 14 towns:

1 Township

The county's sole township is : * Huangwan ().

Geography

The county's northern border is formed by the Huai River and neighboring

Wuhe County Wuhe may refer to these places in China: * Wuhe County (五河县), in Bengbu, Anhui Towns *Wuhe, Anqing (五河), in Yuexi County, Anhui *Wuhe, Baiyin (五合), in Jingyuan County, Gansu *Wuhe, Wuwei, Gansu (五和), in Wuwei, Gansu *Wuhe, Guangd ...

. The county is also home to the Huayuan Lake, which totals about 30 square kilometers in size.

Climate

The average annual temperature for Fengyang County is 14.9 °C, and the average annual precipitation is 904.4 mm.

History

Pre-Ming Dynasty

During the Xia, Shang and early Zhou dynasties, the

Dongyi The Dongyi or Eastern Yi () was a collective term for ancient peoples found in Chinese records. The definition of Dongyi varied across the ages, but in most cases referred to inhabitants of eastern China, then later, the Korean peninsula, and Ja ...

peoples inhabited this area and were collectively known as the Huaiyi after the Huai River. During the late Western Zhou Period and the early Spring and Autumn period, the Dongyi became increasingly sinicized and formed their own states. During the late Spring and Autumn period, the once-powerful Dongyi state of Xu (state), Xu was pressured from all directions and destroyed through a series of wars with its neighbors, such as the Chu (state), Chu State and the Wu (state), Wu State. Another Dongyi State was the small Zhongli (state), Zhongli State, which was a part of the Huaiyi Confederation led by the State of Xu. Tombs belonging to the royalty of the Zhongli State were discovered in excavations between 2005 and 2008 near Fengyang. Eventually, the Huaiyi peoples were either pushed south or assimilated.

Ming Dynasty

Fengyang's best known historical site is linked with the name of the county's most famous native, Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398). Although coming from a poor family, he became an important rebel leader and, later, the founder of China's Ming Dynasty. Once entrenched as the Hongwu Emperor in the nearby Nanjing, he honored the memory of his father, Zhu Wusi (d. 1344), and his mother, Lady Chen, by posthumously raising them to imperial dignity, and building for them an imperial-style mausoleum, known as Ming Huangling (, literally, "Ming Imperial Mausoleum").Eric N. Danielson,
The Ming Ancestor Tomb
". ''China Heritage Quarterly'', No. 16, December 2008. The emperor even started building the new imperial capital, named Zhongdu () near his childhood hometown, but the project was eventually abandoned. The spirit way, stone figures of the Huangling Mausoleum have survived, and have been re-erected at the original location, some south of the county seat (()). The mausoleum statuary and the remains of the capital-building project are protected as a national historic site known as "Zhongdu Imperial City of the Ming and the Imperial Mausoleum's Statuary" (). In 1370, existing counties in the area were merged into a new county, named Linhuai County.

Qing Dynasty

In 1754, Linhuai County was restructured into a new county called Fengyang County, which serves as the descendant of the modern Fengyang County.

Recent History

The county's borders are jurisdiction has changed numerous times since its Qing-era formation. From 1959 to 1960, during the Great Leap Forward, 60,245 people of the county died, occupying 17.7 percent to its total population of 335,698. 8,404 complete households were wiped out. In 1974, future Chinese Premier of the People's Republic of China, Premier Li Keqiang was sent to Damiao, Fengyang County, Damiao, Fengyang County as part of Mao Zedong's Down to the Countryside Movement, Down to the Countryside Program. Here, he did manual labour throughout the day and studied for university, Li recounts his days in the county as "hard times". He rose up to the rank of Damiao's Communist Party of China, Communist Party branch secretary in 1976, before leaving for Peking University in 1978.

Economy

Fengyang County's natural resources include limestone, quartz, marble, vermiculite, and asbestos.

Transportation

Key highways in the county include the G36 Nanjing–Luoyang Expressway, G36 Expressway, Anhui Provincial Highway 101, Anhui Provincial Highway 207, Anhui Provincial Highway 307, and Anhui Provincial Highway 310. The Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway, Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Rail also passes through the county.

References

{{County-level divisions of Anhui Chuzhou County-level divisions of Anhui Fengyang County,