Guiyang History
The region making up modern day Guiyang has an ancient history spanning thousands of years. During the Epoch of the Warring states the region was the middle zone between the Chu Qian, and it was subordinate to the mysterious Yelang Kingdom, a society which was established by local ethnic groups and was believed to be a wealthy and prosperous kingdom ecomomically and culturally until it suddenly disappeared in 26 BC. After the disappearence of the Yelang Kingdom, the area became subordinate to the Zangke Prefucture during the Han Dynasties, and in the periods of the Tang Dynasties the area was under the control of the Ju Autonomus Prefuncture. During the Song Dynasty the area including and encomapassing modern day Guiyang was named Guizhou.
The old city of Guiyang was constructed during the Yuan Dynasty (which was founded by Kublai Khan and the Mongols) in 1283 AD, and was originally named Shunyuan, meaning "obeying the Yuan." The Mongols made Guiyang the seat of an army and a “pacification zone”. Around this period local Chinese began to settle the area.
During the Qing and Ming dynasties the city was established as an administrative center and renamed Guiyang. It became the capital of Guizhou province in 1913. Locally Guiyang beacme an important economic center, with two merhant communitied inhabiting the city. These were the Sichuanese people who primarily lived in the northern section of the city, and the peoples of Guangdong, Hunan, and Guangxi, who dominated the southern part of Guiyang. Despite Guiyang's economic importance to Guizhou province, the predominate perception of the city was that it was merely the capital city of one of China's poorest and least developed provinces.
During the Chinese war between the Communist forces and the Kuo Ming Tang, the leader of the Kuo MangTing forces, Chinag Kai Shek, flew to Guiyang and made it his base of operations agaist Mao Zedong, in an effort to prevent comunist forces from capturing the city. Mao and his Red forces fled East and the city was left undistrubed until 1939 when it was bombed by Japanese forces. As a result of these attacks approximately a third of "old" Guiyang was destroyed.
During World War II Guiyang became the center of Nationalist Activities against invading Japanese forces and many refugees from the eastern part of China sought refuge. As a result, bustling economic and social activity emerged and Guiyang’s rapid development was underway. During the war roads and other vital infrastructure was built which linked Guiyang to Yunan and Chongqing. Furthermore, construction began on a railway between Guiyang and Liuzhou, Guangxi, and this construction was accelerated in 1949. This railway was completed in 1959, and subsequently connected Guiyang to Chongqing in the north, Kunming in the west, and Changsha in the east. In the decades following the completein of this ambitious project Guiyang has continued to develop at a rapid pace, and today the city is an economic hub of Guizhou province.