History of Jinan
Early history
The area of present-day Jinan has been inhabited for more than 4000 years. The Neolithic Longshan culture was first discovered at Chengziya to the east of Jinan (Zhangqiu District) in 1928. One of the characteristic features of the Longshan culture are the intricate wheel-made pottery pieces it produced. Most renowned is the black “egg-shell pottery” with wall thicknesses that can go below 1 millimeter.[11]
During the Spring and Autumn period (722–481 BCE) and Warring States period (475–221 BCE), the area of Jinan was split between two states: the state of Lu in the west and the state of Qi in the east. In 685 BCE, the state of Qi started to build the Great Wall of Qi across Changqing county. Portions of the wall still remain today and are accessible as open air museums. Bian Que, according to the legend the earliest Chinese physician and active around 500 BCE, is said to have been a native of present-day Changqing County. Zou Yan (305–240 BCE), a native of Zhangqiu City, developed the concepts of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements. Joseph Needham, a British sinologist, describes Zou as “The real founder of all Chinese scientific thought.”[12]
During the times of the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), Jinan was the capital of the Kingdom of Jibei (simplified Chinese: 济北国; traditional Chinese: 濟北國; pinyin: Jǐbĕi Guó) and evolved into the cultural and economic hub of the region. The Han dynasty tomb where the last king of Jibei, Liú Kuān (刘宽/劉寬), was buried at Shuangru Mountainwas excavated by archaeologists from Shandong University in 1995 and 1996.[13] More than 2000 artifacts such as jade swords, jade masks, and jade pillows have been recovered within the 1,500 square meter excavation site, emphasizing the wealth of the city during the period.[14] Cao Cao (155 – 220 CE) was an official in Jinan before he became the de facto ruler of the Han dynasty.[15] His son, Cao Pi, overthrew the last emperor of the Han and founded the Wei Kingdom (220 – 265 CE) of the Three Kingdoms Period.
Beginning in the 5th century CE, Buddhism flourished in Jinan. The Langgong Temple (朗公寺; Lǎnggōng Sì, later renamed Shentong Temple, (神通寺; Shéntōng Sì, and now in ruins) in the southern county of Licheng was one of the most important temples in northern China at that time. The same period witnessed extensive construction of Buddhist sites in the southern counties of Licheng and Changqing such as the Lingyan Temple and the Thousand-Buddha Cliff. In particular, a large number of cave temples were established in the hills south of Jinan.[9]
Jinan remained the cultural center of the region during the Song dynasty (960 – 1279 CE). The Song rulers promoted Jinan to a superior prefecture in 1116 CE. Two of the most important poets of the Southern Song were both born in Jinan: Li Qingzhao (1084–1151 CE), the most renown female poet in Chinese history, and Xin Qiji (1140–1207 CE), who was also a military leader of the Southern Song dynasty. Both poets witnessed a series of crushing defeats of the Song dynasty at the hands of the Jurchens who gained control over almost half of the Song territories and established the Jin dynasty in northern China. After Jinan came under control of the Jin dynasty, both Li Qingzhao and Xin Qiji had to abandon their homes and reflected this experience in their works.
During the Civil War that followed the proclamation of Kublai Khan as Great Khan in 1260 CE, Jinan was at the center of a rebellion by Yizhou governor Li Tan against Mongol rule in 1262 CE. The rebellion was crushed in a decisive battle that was fought not far from Jinan in late March or early April 1262 CE. After losing 4000 of his troops in the battle, Li Tan retreated to Jinan to make his last stand. After defections of his defenders had made his position untenable, Li Tan tried to commit suicide by drowning himself in Daming Lake. However, he was rescued by the Mongols in order to execute him by trampling him to death with their horses.[16]
Despite such violent conflicts, culture in Jinan continued to thrive during the Jin (1115–1234) and Yuan (1271–1368) dynasties: One of the most renowned artists of the Yuan dynasty, Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322) was appointed to the post of governor of Jinan in 1293 and spent three years in the city. Among the extraordinary art works he completed during his stay in Jinan, the best known painting is “Autumn Colors on the Qiao and Hua Mountains” (《鹊华秋色》). Geographer Yu Qin (1284–1333) also served as an official in Jinan and authored his geography book Qi Cheng there.
When Shandong province was established under the Ming dynasty, Jinan became its capital.[9] Jinan was the site of a siege during the Jingnan Campaign where the city was defended by loyalists of the Jianwen Emperor led by Tie Xuan against the rebel Prince of Yan Zhu Di’s army.
In 1852, the northward shift of the Yellow River into a new bed close to the city triggered the modern expansion of Jinan. The new course of the Yellow River connected the city to the Grand Canal and regional waterways in northern Shandong and southern Hebei.[9]
German influence in Jinan grew after the Qing dynasty ceded Qingdao to the German Empire in 1897. A German concession area was established to the west of the historical city center (in the vicinity of the Jinan Railway Station first established by the Germans). The Jiaoji (Qingdao–Jinan) railway was built by the Germans against local resistance.[17] Discontent over the construction of the railway was one of the sources fueling the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901).[18] During the rebellion, foreign priests were evacuated from Jinan and Chinese Christians became a target of violence. The Jiaoji railway was completed in 1904, three years after the Boxer Rebellion had been put down, and opened the city to foreign trade.[9] The importance of Jinan as a transportation hub was cemented with the completion of the north–south Jinpu railway from Tianjin to Pukou in 1912.[9] Jinan became a major trading center for agricultural goods in northern China. Traded commodities included cotton, grain, peanuts, and tobacco.[9] Jinan also developed into a major industrial center, second in importance to Qingdao in the province.
Republican era
In 1919, after the First World War, the Japanese took over the German sphere of influence in Shandong, including control of the Jiaoji railway, and established a significant Japanese influence in Jinan.[9] According to estimates by a contemporary Japanese government official, about 2,000 Japanese were living in Jinan in 1931, about half of whom were involved in the opium trade for which the Japanese had a loosely controlled monopoly that was exploited with the participation of Chinese traders.[19]
During the Warlord era of the Republic of China, Zhang Zongchang, nicknamed the “Dogmeat General”,[20] ruled Shandong from Jinan for a period that lasted from April 1925 until May 1928. Zhang was unpopular for his heavy-handed rule and in particular his heavy taxation.[21] Besides heavy taxes, he relied financially on opium to finance his periodic wars.[19] Zhang even planned to use some of the wealth extracted from these sources for building a living shrine and a large bronze statue for himself on the shore of Daming Lake, but these plans were not realized as his rule came to an end.
In the spring of 1928, the Kuomintang’s Northern Expedition reached Jinan.[22] On May 3, 1928, clashes developed between Japanese troops stationed in Jinan and the Kuomintang troops moving into the city (Jinan Incident).[23] Cai Gongshi, a Kuomintang emissary sent to negotiate and 16 members of his entourage were cruelly executed by the Japanese. Japanese officers placed an order to slice off his nose and ears, and to gouge out his eyes and tongue. Sixteen other members of his negotiation team were also striped naked, recklessly whipped, dragged to the back-lawn, and slaughtered by machine guns on the same day.[24] After the incident, Japanese reinforcements were sent to Shandong and by 11 May, Japanese troops pushed the Chinese troops from the area, inflicted thousands of casualties[25] and killed over 2000 Chinese civilians.[26] The Japanese occupied Jinan for more than six months until they withdrew to their garrison in Tsingtao on the 28th of March 1929. When Chiang lectured a group of Chinese army cadets, he urged them to turn their energies to washing away the shame of Jinan, but to conceal their hatred until the last moment.[27] The Kuomintang government later decreed that May 3 be designated a “National Humiliation Memorial Day.”
During the Nanjing decade of the Republic of China, Han Fuju, a military commander from the warlord era who had aligned himself with the Kuomintang, was rewarded with the military governorship of Shandong, after fighting against the rebel troops of Yen Hsi-shan and his former commander Feng Yu-hsiang in the Central Plains War in 1930.[28] He established his base in Jinan and is credited with curtailing banditry and drug trading, thereby bringing a measure of peace and prosperity to the city.[29] However, from 1935 onwards Han was under heavy pressure from the Japanese consul in Jinan to declare Shandong an “independent state” allied with Japan.
After the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese invasion force crossed the Yellow River 60 km (37 mi) north-east of Jinan on December 23, 1937.[30] Han Fuju abandoned Jinan the next day against orders to hold the city to the death.[30] He ordered the offices of the provincial government and the Japanese consulate in Jinan to be burned down[30] and the ensuing power vacuum led to widespread looting in the city.[30] Japanese troops from the 10th Division of the Manchurian Area Army[31] entered Jinan on December 27, 1937.[30] Han Fuju was arrested and executed for disobeying orders from superior commanders and retreating on his own accord[32] by Chiang Kai-Shek’s chief of staff, General Hu Zongnan.
After World War II
Japanese troops controlled Jinan until their defeat in 1945. After this, the Kuomintang regained short-lived control of the city during the period from 1946 to 1948. The provincial government during this time was led by Lieutenant-General Wang Yaowu, who also commanded the KMT army in the region. KMT rule over Jinan ended in September 1948 with the Battle of Jinan in which units of the People’s Liberation Army under the command of Chen Yi took the city. The battle for Jinan took a decisive turn in favor of the attackers when KMT Lieutenant-General Wú Huàwén (吴化文) defected to the Communist side with about 8,000 of his troops.[35] The most likely explanation for his defection is that he had been pressured through relatives of his who were held captive by the Communist forces.[35] Lieutenant-General Wu had been in charge of the vital outer ring of defenses that protected the main airfield, the railroad station, and the commercial district.[35] With these critical assets lost, the situation of the city’s defenders became untenable. Following the weakening of the city’s defenses, the People’s Liberation Army breached the city wall and entered Jinan on September 24, 1948.
Cultural Revolution
In March 1966, the largest among the drawn-out sequence of earthquakes that made up the Xingtai earthquake damaged about 36,000 houses in Jinan.[36]
On May 27, 1966, the Cultural Revolution started in Jinan with an article in the local newspaper “Jinan Evening News” (济南晚报) that denounced vice-governor Yu Xiu as a Bourgeois agent within the government.[36] Starting from early June 1966, the schools in Jinan were closed down by strikes as teachers were “struggled against”. At the same time, big-character posters started to appear in the city.[36] Red Guards took to the streets of Jinan from late August 1966 onwards, damaging cultural heritage and setting up courts to prosecute perceived enemies of the revolution. In the spring of 1967, the “May 7th Incident” took place: When Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, both later reviled as members of the Gang of Four, visited Jinan to support the Cultural Revolution and its local leader Wang Xiao Yu, fighting erupted in the front of the provincial government between two rival factions of the Cultural Revolution, the “April 22nd Group” and Wang Xiao Yu’s “April 28th Group”. In the end, more than 10,000 people had been involved in the fighting.[37] On October 11, 1967, the tallest statue of Mao Zedong in Shandong province was erected on the campus of Shandong Normal University.[38] On September 17, 1968, a large assembly of Jinan workers celebrated the arrival of a mango fruit in the “August 1st” Meeting Hall. The fruit had been a gift to the workers in Beijing by Mao and was subsequently passed on to the workers in Jinan. In November 1968, Wang Xiao Yu began to agitate against the local army units in Jinan and Shandong Province. By then unrest due to the Cultural Revolution had severely damaged the city’s governmental and industrial infrastructure, with about 80 percent of all government institutions shut down.[39] Large public protests were staged on April 4 and 5, 1969, in which approximately 500,000 people protested the occupation of Zhenbao Island by the Soviet Union.[40]On July 29, 1970, the leadership of the Cultural Revolution passed a resolution to make sweeping changes to the city’s educational system: The liberal arts departments of Shandong University were moved to Qufu and combined with Qufu Normal College to form a new Shandong University. The biology department was moved to Tai’an and merged into the Shandong Agricultural College. The rest of the sciences were to form the Shandong Science and Technology University. Shandong Normal University was to be moved to Liaocheng. Shandong Medical College and Shandong College of Traditional Chinese Medicine were to be merged and moved to Tai’an.[41] Shandong University was restored in its original form and the “Shandong Science and Technology University” was abolished in early 1974.[42]The first reversals of Cultural Revolution policies started in early 1971: On May 23 of that year, the Shandong Provincial Museum was reopened after having been closed for about 5 years (since May 1966).[43] In the next year, the Jinan Committee for the Cultural Revolution officially reverted the name changes of four city districts enacted in 1966. During the 6 years between the name change and its reversal, Lixia District had been known officially as “Hongwei”, Tianqiao as “Face the Sun”, Huaiyin as “East Wind”, and Shizhong as “Red Flag”.[44] As the Cultural Revolution came to an end, Jinan started to receive visitors from abroad. For example, it was visited by a delegation from the United States Congress between August 8 and 11, 1975.[45] On September 18, 1976, Mao’s death was mourned by about 600,000 people at an official service in Jinan’s August 1 Square.[46]
Post 1990s
Jinan was the host of the 11th All China Games during October 2009. These games are the selection games for the Chinese Olympic champions. For this occasion, security was heightened and a full volunteer force was out on the streets directing visitor traffic. The city conducted major renovations in its transportation and recreation services in anticipation of the Games’ visitors.[47]
2019
At the beginning of January, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China approved the approval of Shandong Province to adjust the administrative division of Laiwu City and Jinan City, cancel Laiwu City, and all jurisdiction of former Laiwu City belongs to Jinan City; establish Laiwu District of Jinan City to replace the former Laicheng District of Laiwu City with the same administrative area; establish Gangcheng District of Jinan City to replace the former Gangcheng District of Laiwu City with the same administrative area.[48]
