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"
Life and work of the people who live in
Chengtu, located in a valley in western
China."
Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved video & sound.
Public domain film from the
Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/
3.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Chengdu
Chengdu (
Chinese: 成都; Sichuanese: Cen2du1; pinyin:
Chéngdū), formerly transliterated Chengtu, is the capital of
Sichuan province in
Southwest China. It holds sub-provincial administrative status. The urban area houses 14,047,625 inhabitants: 7,
123,697 within the municipality's nine districts and 6,730,
749 in the surrounding region.
Chengdu is one of the most important economic, transportation, and communication centers in
Western China. According to the
2007 Public Appraisal for
Best Chinese Cities for
Investment, Chengdu was chosen as one of the top ten cities to invest in out of a total of 280 urban centers in China. In
2006, it was named
China's 4th-most livable city by
China Daily.
The fertile
Chengdu Plain, on which Chengdu is located, is also known as the "
Country of
Heaven" (天府之国, Tiānfǔzhiguó), a phrase also often translated as "
The Land of
Abundance".
The discovery of the
Jinsha site suggests the area of Chengdu had become the center of the bronze age
Sanxingdui culture around the time of the establishment of the state of Shu, prior to its annexation by Qin in 316 BC
...
As a central city for at least
2000 years, Chengdu's influence has gradually expanded from the
Sichuan basin to Western China. At its height, Chengdu was once named "One of the Five
Metropolis" in China and was equally famous with
Yangzhou in history. During the Three-Kingdom period,
Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of Shu kingdom, called Chengdu "the land of abundance".
Li Bai, the famous poet during the
Tang Dynasty, eulogized the city as "Chengdu lies above empyrean".
Su Shi, the eminent writer during the
Song Dynasty, hailed Chengdu as "the southwestern metropolis"
. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, brocade production was advanced here, giving Chengdu the name "the brocade city". During the Latter
Shu Kingdom, it got the name "the hibiscus city" since hibiscus trees were planted throughout the city walls, quite a site during their yearly blossom...
Chengdu was also the birthplace of the first widely used paper money in the world (
Northern Song Dynasty, around 960
AD)...
In 1279 the
Mongols sacked Chengdu, killing 1.4 million inhabitants in the process. In 1644, at the end of the
Ming Dynasty, another rebel leader,
Zhang Xianzhong, established a short-lived Daxi (大西)
Dynasty in
Sichuan with Chengdu, which he renamed Xijing (西京,
Western Capital), as the capital. Zhang was said to have massacred large number of people in Sichuan with Chengdu reduced to a virtual ghost town frequented by tigers, and resulted in the resettlement of millions of people from other provinces during the
Qing Dynasty.
During the
Second World War the Kuomintang (
KMT,
Chinese Nationalist Party) government under
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fled to Sichuan province to escape the invading
Japanese forces. They brought with them businesspeople, workers and academics, who founded many of the industries and cultural institutions which continue to make Chengdu an important center.
In
1944 the
American XX Bomber Command launched
Operation Matterhorn, an ambitious plan to base
B-29 Superfortresses in Chengdu and strategically bomb the
Japanese Home Islands...
During the
Chinese Civil War, Chengdu was the last city on the
Chinese mainland to be held by the Kuomintang-controlled government...
The industrial base is very broad, including light and heavy manufacturing, aluminum smelting and chemicals. The textile industry remains important, with cotton and wool milling added to the traditional manufacturing of silk brocade and satin.
Chengdu is the headquarters of the
Chengdu Military Region.
On May 12, 2008, a magnitude
8.0 earthquake struck causing damage to the area, killing about 80,
000 people and injuring 26,413 as of May 12, 2008. 4,
021 of the casualties and most of the property damage were from
Dujiangyan and
Pengzhou, two cities within the administration of Chengdu, the sub-provincial city. Chengdu did not suffer any discernible damage. The reason why many people died in the surrounding areas had to do with poor construction. Though only 75 kilometres (47 mi) from the epicenter, Chengdu itself was built to earthquake specification, and most buildings there remained intact...
- published: 12 Apr 2016
- views: 98