History of Qian An County, Tangshan Prefecture Main Menu

residence of the legendary very first Chinese Emperor, known as the Yellow Emperor (For more information, see: "Introduction to Chinese History - Summary 5000 years & Chinese Dynasties"), one might take such claims with a grain of salt. Although the legend of the Yellow Emperor (Huang Di) may yet emerge from the mysts of time, so far no evidence of his true existence have ever been found.

As can be read in the full history of Tangshan Prefecture and the histories of neighboring counties and their sections of the Great Wall of China until as late as the turn into the 20th Century and the subsequent fall of the Manchu led Qing Dynasty (1644 AD - 1911 AD) all of Tangshan Prefecture was mostly counted as remote rural territory, lands where remote farming villages and their inhabitants led a relatively secluded life with little contact with the regional cities let alone the outside world.

As an illustration of this fact one may remember that the mining industry, which took some importance in the 2th century development of North Eastern China, only arrived in 1877 AD and that due to the resulting economic development of the region the city of Tangshan itself emerged. Previously, at least until the Guangxu Emperor appointed Tangshan as the location for the opening of coal and ore mines in the mountains in the north of what today is Tangshan Prefecture in 1887 AD, Tangshan had only been a rural town itself. Much later, only as late as in 1938 AD and by then under Japanese Occupation, Tangshan was of sufficient size and importance to be administratively recognized as City. From then on Tangshan was mostly known as a mining and agricultural district which it remained until the devastating earthquake of 1976 which rattled the City and rural towns in the vicinity.

In the early 1930's, long before the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and subsequent full Japanese Invasion of China, the entire north east of China feel under Japanese influence and gradually de facto Foreign Occupation. As with the city of Beijing, Qian 'An and its County rested uneasily under the yoke of the Foreign Invader.

YANG XIUFENG (1897 AD - 1993):

Yang Xiufeng was born somewhere in Qian 'An County in the year 1897 AD when Revolutionary talk was already in the air. Yang Xiufeng was only 3 years old when subsequently the Boxer War broke out in 1900 AD, engulfing the Capital Beijing and not long there after bringing a naval invasion by entirely Foreign Armies and peoples to his beforehand quiet and peaceful rural life.

As we can make out from adjacent historic Map of the wider regions including the Korean Peninsula, by 1904 AD Qian 'An was already a town of considerable importance, marked independently on the map connected and already connected by a main north to south road, which today has turned into the S252 Provincial Road and, over a 100 years later, is still the main thoroughfare in Qian 'An and County. On the map another road can be seen running east to west through Tsyanan making it more important that other more remote villages. Clearly at the time Qian 'An was already recognized as a County Town and Administrative Seat (Hsien, today: Xian) rather than a village (Xiang, or even smaller: Cun).

Until fairly recently, virtually no one would visit the remote outlying sections of the Great Wall of China found in Qian 'An and other counties of Tangshan Prefecture. In fact, as late as in 1966 during the launch of the Cultural Revolution, a call made by Mao Zedong (and eagerly promoted by his group of leftist helpers among whom Chiefly General Lin Biao and Mao's Wife Jiang Qing) to demolish everything that represented the "Old China" led (among things) to an all out attack on the Great Wall and an ongoing rural farm construction spree. With overpopulation and under-development as additional drivers of the process, the Great Wall was nearly pulverized in places. Bricks torn from the Great Wall were readily used in the construction of new family housing and large sections of this historic monument were thereby heavily damaged. A Not too often mentioned topic among tour guides tending to groups eager to see and walk the wild great wall and hear of its tales, it is this fairly recent act of cultural destruction and gross vandalism and not wind- or air erosion that has left many parts of the Great Wall of China in the wider region in the sadly dilapidated state they are in today. Natually, for the sake of mass tourism various sections have been reconstructed into a (semi-)historical likeness of the original. where as others are in the process being "restored".

Often this includes the development of parking lot and small business in the access area to the Great Wall sections.

of Party Enemy, Class enemy, enemy of the People), with all due consequences of public ridicule, physical violence and violations of his persons and dignity. No doubt, with him his family and friends suffered a tumble down the social ladder and worse.

Not able to take the strain, Yang attempted to commit suicide but somehow failed in his attempt (method of attempt and manner of rescue as yet unavailable). Having attempted to escape his punishment by "the masses" Yang then had to suffer through it all. With Mao's consent, he was subjected repeatedly to public humiliations and beatings. As a last treat he had the notious historic pleasure of being publically denounced in front of the whole Nation. In the freezing cold of January of 1967, his person was displayed at a mass rally at the Chaoyang Workers Stadium in Beijing orchestrated by none other than Mao's wife Jiang Qing, Yang after which he was entirely purged from the party rank and file. However, probably due to his well established record as a old guard guerilla man and possible longstanding connections with the army he was stripped of his membership of the Communist Party.

Subsequently lost somewhere doing manual labor for the State, Yang only re-apparead as late as in 1974 and soon after he was rehabilitated to some positions. It would however only be after the death of Mao Zedong in September of 76 that Yang XiuFeng could make his come back. Although Liu Shaoqi had died miserably in a prison cell in Shandong Province, his old ally Deng Xiaoping made sure to honor his relations and with the rise of Deng came also a new highpoint for Yang Xiufeng. Fully rehabilitated and his honors restored by the "New Emperor" Deng and his administration, Yang then received an honorary post as Vice Chairman of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the body at which he had started his political career at the very first beginnings of the Peoples Republic. Gratefully accepting, Yang dutyfully performed his task between the years from 1980 to 1983. However, when the upbeat and for Chinese terms even Liberal Political tide seemed to come to an end with the removal of Party Chief (Secretary) Hu Yaobang, and new political strife appeared, Professor Yang decided to call his career complete.

At some time in the year 1983 he asked not be further burdened and not to be elected to further high political postings, however attractive they may be.

Having effectively retired Yang was in Beijing to live through the hopes and ultimate Carnage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Student Protests and their violent suppression. No longer a member of the Supreme Court he was politically not involved in the affair. Yang died but a few years later in Beijing in the year 1993.

Seemingly doing well in his career, in the period following the establishment Professor Yang Xiufeng is recorded to have traveled widely. After a first trip as head Head of an Educational delegation to visit Poland in 1957, he visited Vietnam, Albania, Mali, Guinea, the German Democratic Peoples Republic (D.D.R.) and a number of other Nations enjoying the fruits of his close relations with Lui Shaoqi who found a growing powerbase in the Nation as the main man controlling the vast bureaucracy of the Peoples Republic.

In April of 1964 Yang could even cash in on greater rewards when he made it to the post of National Minister of Education under the Leadership of President Liu Shaoqi. Still on the rise Yang also grabbed the title and post of President of the Supreme Peoples Court (in Beijing), which he held from July through December of 1964, reagardless of being devout of Legal Credentials in any form.

Then however came the downfall and tragedy struck Yang and his entire family when in January of 1965 Yang was thrown out of office as a result of the Hai Rui affair. Having been shot down as a result of the first few opening shots of a new wave of leftist drama that would culminate into the Cultural Revolution later that year, Yang was left politically vulnerable.

Due to the large area covered by the Map the image gives the impression that the regions of current day north-eastern Hebei Province were already crowded with various rural villages and a booming population, however in reality that was certainly not the case.

(For more information see: Transport in Qian 'An and County.)

Yang Xiufeng was henceforth sent to Beijing to receive a rather privileged education in the Beijing Normal School, which he graduated from in 1916. Regardless of the ongoing wars, turmoil and political upheavals befalling the Nation in rapid succession, Yang still managed to continue his education and a decade after entering Beijing he graduated from the famous Beijing University in the year 1926 AD. Reflecting the developments in the Regions from whence he came Yang graduated from the Department of History and more noteably Geography. Subsequently, in the year 1929 AD, he traveled to Paris apparently for Doctoral Studies.

Succesful in all his pursuits, Yang returned from Paris a rare educated Man among a sea of hapless and illiterate human beings. With the rare prize of a Foreign Education at a renowned institute among his credentials, he found himself immediately invited to take up a Professorship at his native Beijing University, which - at the advent of the Sino-Japanese War - was still function in the Capital of Beijing, by geographical distance not too far from Qian 'An County.

Influenced by the at times radical political atmosphere at the University and his many peers Yang must have at least become an ardent Nationalist and someone who was opposed to the ever increasing Japanese stranglehold on the exhausted and by that time fragmented Chinese Nation (This was a fairly common attitude among intellectuals in China at

the time).

Yang lectured at Beijing University from 1933 to 1937 until his life was turned upside down by the outbreak of the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugou Qiao) Incident and the subsequent wholesale Japanese Invasion of mainland China including its main port of Shanghai. While this was marked as the official beginning of the Sino-Japanese War (which in fact had lingered for 10 years already) Professor Yang took to the hills near the city of Baoding (due South of Beijing and not so far from Marco Polo Bridge) and, with help of a group students he organized, and started carrying out guerilla type attacks on the advancing Japanese Army. Rather spectacularly, Professor Yang and his team of students survived their meetings with the much better equipped and trained Japanese Army. Still alive by summer of 1938, they then joined with the so called Shanxi-Chahar-Hopei Revolutionary Region, a proclaimed Socialist State in the making which was led at the time by none other than Liu Shaoqi, who would much later become President of the Peoples Republic of China. The joining of forces with the Communists in the new revolutionary state would prove to be a noteable and significant step in the life and carreer of Yang Xiufeng.

Becoming a member of the now Legendary 8Th Route Army in the year 1938, but a long two years after the ending of the heroic Long March at Yanan (to the west in the north of Shaanxi Province), Yang Xiufeng then stayed the course throughout the anti-Japanese War and the Civil War on the Guomindang Nationalist Party to emerge as top member of the Ranks of the Communist Party of China.

Yang Xiufeng was promoted to the rank of Governor of Hebei Province in August of 1949, even before the official establishment of the Peoples Republic of China (Oct. 1st 1949), and held the post until November of 1952 when he was promoted onwards to the post of Vice Minister of Higher Education.

Even more noteworthy, Yang was also member of the first ever Standing Committee of the CPPCC under Communist Control, the China Peoples Consultative Conference, which dealt with many issues regarding the establishment of the new State. Yang was also the first Deputy for Hebei Province to be sent as delegate to the the NPC, the National Peoples Congress also dubbed the "rubber stamp" Parliament of the Mao and New China Era.

Although this seems to have been the highpoint of the career of Professor Yang, who there after focussed on his task of building higher education in a new socialist China, it must be noted that throughout his later life Yang would remain strongly associated with his previous Commander-in-Chief, the leader of the Shanxi-Hopei-Chahar Region, Liu Shaoqi.

On March the 8th of 1966 a heavy and shallow earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck near the then county town of Xingtai ( 邢台) in southern Hebei Province. The Xingtai Earthquake as it was subsequently dubbed had its epicenter in Longyao County of today's Xingtai Prefecture. and was followed by a lengthy serious of heavy aftershocks. Particularly, 5 more earthquakes measuring above magnitude 6 on the Richter scale struck in a period that lasted up to March 29, 1966. The strongest of these quakes had a magnitude of 7.2 and took place in the southeastern part of Ningjin County of Xingtai Prefecture on March 22. Although the population had already been alerted the earthquake damage still included 8,064 dead, 38,000 injured and more than 5 million destroyed houses.

In the very next year, in 1967, another earthquake rattled the Tangshan Regions. In this event, an earthquake struck under the seabed of the nearby Bohai Bay of the Yellow Sea, causing a small Tsunami that rolled ashore along the beaches of Qinhuangdao Prefecture and southern Tangshan Prefecture, but which luckily did relatively little damage.

Although these earthquake events did alarm the Central Government and prompt Prime Minster Zhou Enlai personally into action, it would not be until the year 1971 AD that a National seismological bureau was established in China. Years later, even in 1975 earthquake protection measures and advise on how to respond in case of an earthquake were reportedly none existent within the rural counties of Tangshan Prefecture, especially in the more remote rural villages found in the mountains.

Some lessons had however been learned. When a series of short and not so powerful quakes struck just north of Qian An and Qinglong in southern Liaoning Province at the end of the year 1974 and in the beginning of 1975 AD, precautionary measures were taken. When subsequently a much larger earthquake struck on February 1 of 1975 AD, peasants and towns people had been moved outside their houses and dwellings. Although again thousand of houses and other buildings were utterly destroyed, due to the warning (which had not reached all) only some 1300 to 1500 people lost their lives in the cataclismic event.

Although the Haicheng Earthquake had registered an impressive 7.3 on the Richter scale, as established by the now active seismological bureau (which had a station in Qinglong), all the previous earthquakes proved to be a mere warning ahead of the major event that would occur in the next year, 1976.

1976 AD TANGSHAN EARTHQUAKE

What can be surmised of Government Reports and various books written on the subject of the Tangshan Earthquake is that in the year 1976 when the earthquake struck the region, on average but 1 out of 3 rural villages was connected to the outside world through means of a (hardened surface) road.

The Book "The Death of Mao" by James Palmer mentions for instance that overall the state of infrastructure in these parts of the countryside were "terrible" and that in the near adjacent Qinglong (Manchu Autonomous) County of Qinhuangdao Prefecture but half of the villages in the mountains could be reached after the earthquake. Almost as if on the passing it also suggests that due to the official minority status of Qinglong County, it seemed that its economy and infrastructure had received even less attention than one might have expected.

NO specific earthquake damage for Qian 'An Town or County in 1976 can be reported at this time. However, among international scientists the Tangshan Earthquake is also labeled as the Qian 'An Quake due to the fact that a second shock that hit the same day had its epicenter near Qian 'An rather than at Tangshan City itself. (Later that same day, a major aftershock (magnitude 7.1) occurred in the neighboring county town of Luanxian, some 43 miles (70 km) to the northeast of Tangshan and just south of Qian 'An Town. This aftershock caused additional damage and casualties and hampered efforts to rescue people already trapped beneath rubble.)

The Qian 'An Quake is further popularly compared the heavy quakes recorded in history together with the 6.2 to 6.9 Richter scale Ninghe Quake (occurring not too far from Tangshan and Beijing in Ninghe County in Tianjin City Province in the year 1976) and the 6.4 Richter scale El Centro Quake that ravaged the US/Mexican border town in 1979 giving some idea of the scale of event that took place and how it must have effected Qian 'An and the surrounding rural towns as well as its Iron Mines. What can also be established already is that Qinglong County was the best earthquake prepared area within Tangshan Prefecture due to the presence of local scientists who were convinced an earthquake would strike).

Possibly as a result of its small size and remote rural background virtually no persons of historical interest or importance are known to have been born and raised in the town of Qian 'An or any of its Townships.

The only widely known such person is a man named Yang Xiufeng.

Since the 1970s and possibly much earlier, the Sanli He, which is the main river running through the town of has reportedly been badly polluted by sewage and waste. The pollution in case was mostly derived from the ever increasing industrialization of Hebei Province and China's north east in General. Especially the rampant mining and according steel production had left the waters of the Sanli He tainted with heavy metals while none to discriminate villagers added their local waste water and garbidge to the soup floating by. Although the Sanli River was also the main source of drinking water as well as irrigitional waters for the local fields and crops, no one apparently cared.

As a resulted from the region's continuous industrial development, only increasing after the opening up policy proclaimed by Deng Xiaoping started to take effect, and more recently a staggering growth of the urban population in the regions regional water source are not only severly polluted but are also under so much stress that

they are near depletion. Ground water levels across Hebei Province have plummeted in recent decades and continue to spiral down to null.

(Read more in: "Rivers, Lakes and Waterways of Hebei Province").

As recorded, although somewhat exaggarated, before the year 1973, the Sanlihe River held crystal clear waters which even in dry periods was replenished with groundwaters which were ultimately derived from the much larger Luan River which flow at some kilometers due west of town. Although frequently hit by storms and heavy rain, Sanlihe River never experienced disasters of drought and flood in its history, providing the villages along its way with drinking waters and abundant waters for their various crops. Since 1973 however, the situation had only worsened until the river was usually dry except for during the rainy season of July and August.

With the depletion of regional water sources, the stressed Sanlihe River had recently dried up and its channel was blocked by the remaining toxix solid waste, plastic and other materials.

Only recently has the flow of the Sanli river through Qian 'An city been revised ending a rather dramatic situation. In 2006 landscape architects were set to work in effort to restore the beauty of the old river flowing through town and address the general poor looks of its center. Among things, a green beltway has been established along the banks of the river, the river banks shifted and water derived from the Luan He syphoned off to feed the new Sanli river and its freshly designed landscape.

The greenway stretches 13.4 km in length and varies 100 - 300 meters in width across the what is intended to become the city of Qian'an, another sub/suburban sprawl attached to the mega/metropolis of Beijing.

The brave new pleasure zone for the new urban dwellers of the coming decade and beyond covers 135 hectares and benefits the current around 700,000 citizens however is intended for a much larger city of the future.

While the citizenry can enjoy a rejuvenated and more livable city center, more fundamental changes improvements have been made regarding the cities waste water magagement system, which previously was virtually non existent. Instead of dumping raw sewage into the river and drinking water source of town, the flow of waste waters has now been seperated from the flow of the SanliHe. In addition, the river has been transformed from the shape of an unpretentious concrete canal into a true river, which includes green banks and even wetlands, the latter of which are intended to serve the filtering of the water, thereby clensing it in a natural way while increasing the esthetic experience for those who enjoy loitering along the river banks. Various modern art works, a fountain and bicycle lanes passing through the greenery have been added to top the new Qian'an experience off and attract more citizenry from the surrounding countryside.

Since the completion of the Green Belt revision of what was previously the rural industrial wasteland of Qian 'An, the town has become renowned in eco and environmental management circles and the project has been widely published on Nationally and internationally, turning Qian 'An city into a new kind of Model Project Town for the newly arrived Government under the leadership of Xi Jinping.

Although Qian 'An can indeed by listed as a succesful project lending a much needed respite to the town and citizenry, pollution woes continue to ravage the Province and wider nation.

It is by no means a given that the river water is actually fit for human consumption as by the ending of year 2014.

With the ever increasing thirst of the nearby cities of Beijing and Tianjin untempered, Sanli river may once again run dry when the already dwindling Luan River disappears underground.

The largest Open Pit Iron Ore Mine in Asia entire is was opened in Malanzhuang Town due north west of Qian 'An City in the year 1991 bringing with it a variety of metallurgical industries. Although this goes under-reported, it is suspected that over the years the mine has been responsible for the contamination of surface- and ground-waters with heavy metals. In addition, the abundant water use by the mine and a growing number of associated industries have drained local resources to a point where the river Sanli had disappeared entirely. Although that river was restored by tapping water from the nearby Luanhe, severe concerns about local water supplies remain of the utmost urgency.

For more information on the Malanzhuan Open Pit Mine, please refer to:

"Economy of Qian 'An County" and "Economy of Tangshan Prefecture".

For most complete general information on the History of the locality, please refer to:

"History of Tangshan City and Tangshan Prefecture".