Sichuan
Sichuan, previously romanized as Szechwan or Szechuan, is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Chengdu, and its population stands at 83 million. Sichuan neighbors Qinghai and Gansu to the north, Shaanxi and Chongqing to the east, Guizhou and Yunnan to the south, and Tibet to the west.
During antiquity, Sichuan was home to the kingdoms of Ba and Shu until their incorporation by the Qin. During the Three Kingdoms era, Liu Bei's state of Shu was based in Sichuan. The area was devastated in the 17th century by Zhang Xianzhong's rebellion and the area's subsequent Manchu conquest. The area recovered to become one of China's most productive by the 19th century. During World War II, Chongqing served as the temporary capital of the Republic of China, and was heavily bombed. It was one of the last mainland areas captured by the People's Liberation Army during the Chinese Civil War, and was divided into four parts from 1949 to 1952, with Chongqing restored two years later. It suffered gravely during the Great Chinese Famine but remained China's most-populous province until Chongqing was again separated from it in 1997.
The Sichuanese people speak distinctive dialects of Mandarin Chinese. The Sichuan pepper, with its distinctive flavor and numbing effect, is prominent in modern Sichuan cuisine, featuring dishes, including Kung Pao chicken and mapo tofu, that have become staples of Chinese cuisine around the world.
There are many panda stations in the province and large reserves for these creatures, such as the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.
Sichuan is the 6th-largest provincial economy of China, the largest in Western China, and the second-largest among inland provinces after Henan. As of 2021, its nominal GDP was , ahead of that of Turkey. If it were its own country, Sichuan would be the 18th-largest economy and 19th-most populous as of 2021.
Names
It is commonly assumed that the name Sichuan means 'four rivers'; in folk etymology, this is usually taken to mean any four of the province's major rivers: Jialing, Jinsha, Wu, Min, and Tuo. According to historical geographer Tan Qixiang, 'four rivers' is an erroneous interpretation of the name. The name of the province is a contraction of the phrases 'Four Plain Circuits' and 'Four Circuits of Chuanxia', referring to the division of the existing imperial administrative circuit in the area into four during the Northern Song dynasty, which were Yizhou, Lizhou, Zizhou, and Kuizhou. The word chuan here means 'plain', not its typical meaning of 'river' as popularly assumed. In addition to its postal map and Wade–Giles forms, the name has also been irregularly romanized as Sze-tchuan and Szechuen, among others.In antiquity, the area of modern Sichuan including the now-separated Chongqing Municipality was known to the Chinese as Ba–Shu, in reference to the ancient state of Ba and the ancient kingdom of Shu that once occupied the Sichuan Basin. Shu continued to be used to refer to the region to the present day; several states formed in the area used the same name, for example, the Shu of the Three Kingdoms period, and Former Shu and Later Shu of the Ten Kingdoms period. Currently, both characters for Shu and Chuan are common abbreviations for Sichuan.
The region was formerly referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions.
History
Prehistory
The Sichuan Basin and adjacent areas of the Yangtze watershed were a cradle of indigenous civilizations dating back to at least the 15th century BC, coinciding with the Shang in northern China. The region had its own distinct religious beliefs and worldview. The earliest excavated culture found therein is the Baodun culture excavated in the Chengdu Plain.Ba and Shu Kingdoms
The most important native states were those of Ba and Shu.Ba stretched into Sichuan from the Han Valley in Shaanxi and Hubei down the Jialing River as far as its confluence with the Yangtze at Chongqing.
Shu occupied the valley of the Min, including Chengdu and other areas of western Sichuan. The existence of the early state of Shu was poorly recorded in the main historical records of China. It was, however, referred to in the Book of Documents as an ally of the Zhou. Accounts of Shu exist mainly as a mixture of mythological stories and historical legends recorded in local annals such as the Chronicles of Huayang compiled in the Jin dynasty, and the Han-dynasty compilation . These contained folk stories such as that of Emperor Duyu who taught the people agriculture and transformed himself into a cuckoo after his death.
The existence of a highly developed civilization with an independent bronze industry in Sichuan was excavated in 1986 at a small village named Sanxingdui in Guanghan, Sichuan. This site, believed to be an ancient city of Shu, was initially discovered by a local farmer in 1929 who found jade and stone artifacts. Excavations by archeologists yielded few significant finds until 1986 when two major sacrificial pits were found with spectacular bronze items as well as artifacts in jade, gold, earthenware, and stone. This and other discoveries in Sichuan contest the conventional historiography that the local culture and technology of Sichuan were undeveloped in comparison to the technologically and culturally "advanced" Yellow River valley of north-central China.
Qin dynasty
The rulers of the expansionist state of Qin, based in present-day Gansu and Shaanxi, were the first strategists to realize that the area's military importance matched its commercial and agricultural significance. The Sichuan basin is surrounded by the Hengduan Mountains to the west, the Qin Mountains to the north, and Yungui Plateau to the south. Since the Yangtze flows through the basin and then through the perilous Three Gorges to eastern and southern China, Sichuan was a staging area for amphibious military forces and a haven for political refugees.Qin armies finished their conquest of the kingdoms of Shu and Ba by 316 BC. Any written records and civil achievements of earlier kingdoms were destroyed. Qin administrators introduced improved agricultural technology. Li Bing, engineered the Dujiangyan irrigation system to control the Min River, a major tributary of the Yangtze. This innovative hydraulic system was composed of movable weirs which could be adjusted for high or low water flow according to the season, to either provide irrigation or prevent floods. The increased agricultural output and taxes made the area a source of provisions and men for Qin's unification of China.
Han dynasty
Sichuan was subjected to the autonomous control of kings named by the imperial family of the Han dynasty. During the 11 years hiatus between 25 and 36 AD, Sichuan was controlled by the Chengjia Kingdom. Following the declining central government of the Han dynasty in the second century, the Sichuan basin, surrounded by mountains and easily defensible, became a popular place for upstart generals to found kingdoms that challenged the authority of Yangtze Valley emperors over China.File:Warlords in 194.jpg|thumb|right|Warlords in China around 194; Liu Bei's takeover of Yi Province meant he seized the positions of Liu Biao and Zhang Lu eventually
Three Kingdoms
In 221, during the partition following the fall of the Eastern Han – the era of the Three Kingdoms – Liu Bei founded the southwest kingdom of Shu Han in parts of Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan, with Chengdu as its capital. Shu-Han claimed to be the successor to the Han dynasty.In 263, the Cao Wei of North China conquered the Kingdom of Shu-Han as a step on the path to reuniting China. Salt production becomes a major business in Ziliujing District. During the Six Dynasties period of Chinese disunity, Sichuan began to be populated by non-Han ethnic minority peoples, owing to the migration of Gelao people from the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the Sichuan basin.
Tang dynasty
Sichuan came under the firm control of a Chinese central government during the Sui dynasty, but it was during the subsequent Tang dynasty that Sichuan regained its previous political and cultural prominence for which it was known during the Han. Chengdu became nationally known as a supplier of armies and the home of Du Fu, who is sometimes called China's greatest poet. During the An Lushan Rebellion, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang fled from Chang'an to Sichuan which became his refuge. The region was torn by constant warfare and economic distress as it was besieged by the Tibetan Empire.Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms
In the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Sichuan became the heart of the Shu kingdom with its capital in Chengdu. In 925, the kingdom was absorbed into Later Tang but would regain independence under Meng Zhixiang who founded Later Shu in 934. Later Shu would continue until 965 when it was absorbed by the Song.Song and Yuan dynasties
During the Song dynasty, Sichuanese was able to protect themselves from Tibetan attacks with the help of the central government. There were rebellions against the Song by Li Shun in 994 and Wang Jun in 1000. Sichuan also saw cultural revivals like the great poets Su Xun, Su Shi, and Su Zhe. Although paper currency was known in the Tang dynasty, in 1023 AD, the first true paper money in human history was issued in Chengdu.It was also during the Song dynasty that the bulk of the native Ba people of eastern Sichuan assimilated into the Han Chinese ethnicity.
In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Southern Song dynasty established coordinated defenses against the Mongolian Yuan dynasty, in Sichuan and Xiangyang. The Southern Song state monopolized the Sichuan tea industry to pay for warhorses, but this state intervention eventually brought devastation to the local economy.
The line of defense was broken through after the first use of firearms in history during the six-year Battle of Xiangyang, which ended in 1273. Allegedly there were a million pieces of unspecified types of skeleton bones belonging to war animals and both Song and Yuan soldiers who perished in the fighting over the city, although the figure may have been grossly exaggerated. The recorded number of families in Sichuan dropped from 2,640,000 families, as recorded from the census taken in 1162 AD, to 120,000 families in 1282 AD.
Possible causes include forced population transfer to nearby areas, evacuation to nearby provinces, census under-reporting or inaccuracy, and war-related deaths.
One instance of the deportation of Sichuanese civilians to Mongolia occurred in the aftermath of a battle in 1259 when more than 80,000 people were taken captive from one city in Sichuan and moved to Mongolia.