Chengdu History

Having a long history of more than 2300 years, Chengdu is the earliest developed city in southwest region of our country and is one of the 24 histories and cultural cities of the whole country.

In the early fourth century B.C., the 9th Kaiming king of the ancient Shu moved his capital to the city's current location from today's nearby Pixian. It said that he has been inspired by the ancient story of King Tai of Zhou, Grandfather of King Wu of Zhou, moving his capital. History recorded King Tai of Zhou's move as "it took a year to become a town; it took three years to become a capital". Following this, king of Shu named the new city as "Cheng Du", which means "becomes a capital". It was called Chengdu up to now.

In 316 BC, Shu Country was conquered by the State of Qin and a new city was founded by the Qin general Zhang Yi. This can be seen as the beginning of the Chinese Chengdu. It was renamed Yìzhou during the Han Dynasty. After the collapse of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Liu Bei, emperor of the Three Kingdoms and Meng Zhixiang, King of the Latter Shu Kingdom all founded their capital in Chengdu. During the Tang Dynasty, Chengdu was the best commercial city second to only Yangzhou. In Song Dynasty, Chengdu became the birthplace of the first widely used paper money in the world. Two rebel leaders, one around the end of Song Dynasty, the other near the end of Ming Dynasty, set up the capitals of their short-lived kingdoms here, called Dàshu and Dàxi respectively.

Later in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), it remained the location of government for Sichuan province. Early in Ming Dynasty (1912-1949), it was the capital city of Sichuan province. On December 27, 1949, Chengdu was liberated and chosen as the location for the administration office for Sichuan province. Since 1952, when Sichuan resumed its status as an administrative province, Chengdu became capital.

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