Home > Hunan

1 Administration

There are 13 prefecture-level cities directly under the provincial juridiction ( Changde , Changsha, Chenzhou , Hengyang , Huaihua , Loudi , Shaoyang , Xiantang , YiyangYiyang is a city in Hunan province, China. Yiyang was founded in the Qin dynasty. During the Taiping Rebellion its name was changed to DeSheng county. Yiyang has many hilly farmlands in its vicinity. The primary crop around Yiyang is rice, with tea also b, Yongzhou , YueyangYueyang is a city in the Hunan province of China, on the shores of the Dongting Lake. Highlights include: YueYang Building., Zhangjiajie and Zhuzhou ), 1 autonomous prefecture,the Xiangxi , and 122 countiesOriginally, a county was the land under the jurisdiction of a count (in Great Britain, an earl, though the original earldoms covered larger areas) by reason of that office. The term has since tended to represent a tertiary geographical unit of administrat.

• See Administrative divisions of Hunan provinceAccording to the Administrative Division System of China, As a province, the first level division of the country, Hunan is subdivided into autonomous prefectures, counties, autonomous counties, and/or cities. Theoretically, a county is the second division

2 History

Hunan entered the written history of China around 350 BC, when under the emperors of the Zhou dynasty it became part of the state Chu Empire ( Chu State ). Until then Hunan was a land of primeval forests, occupied by the Miao, Tujia, Tung ( Dong) and Yao peoples, but starting at this time and for hundreds of years thereafter it was a magnet for migration of Han Chinese from the north, who cleared most of the forests and began farming rice in the valleys and plains. To this day, many of the small villages in Hunan are named after the Han families which originally settled there.

Hunan, was, together with Hubei, Guangdong and Guangxi, forming the province of Huguang (湖廣) till Qing dynasty.

Hunan became an important communications center from its position on the Yangzi River (Changjiang) and on the Imperial Highway constructed between northern and southern China. Its land produced grain so abundantly that it fed many parts of China with its surpluses. The population continued to climb until, by the 19th century, Hunan was overcrowded and prone to peasant uprisings.

The Taiping Rebellion (Taiping Tianguo Peasants Uprising or Peaceful Heaven Peasants Uprising) which began to the south in Guangxi Province in 1850 spread into Hunan and then further eastward along the Yangzi River valley, but ultimately it was a Hunanese army under Zeng Guofan which marched to Nanjing and put down the uprising in 1864. Hunan was relatively quiet until 1910 when there were uprisings against the crumbling Qing dynasty, which were followed by the Communist's Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927 led by Hunanese native Mao Zedong. The Communists maintained a guerilla army in the mountains along the Hunan- Jiangxi border until 1934, when under pressure from the Nationalist ( Kuomintang, KMT) forces they began the famous Long March to bases in Shaanxi Province. After the departure of the Communists, the KMT army fought against the Japanese, defending the capital Changsha until it fell in 1944. Hunan was relatively unscathed by the civil war that followed the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, and in 1949 the Communists returned once more as the Nationalists retreated southward.

Being Mao Zedong's home province, Hunan supported the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, and was slower than most provinces in adopting the reforms implemented by Deng Xiaoping in the years that followed Mao's death in 1976.