Where Communists say the first gunshot rang in 1927
Nanchang, Jiangxi’s capital on Poyang Lake plain, was celebrated after 1949 as the birthplace city of the People’s Liberation Army because of the 1927 uprising against Nationalists. Nature Index lists it among the world’s top hundred science cities.
The city lies on the right bank of the Gan River, about 40 kilometres upstream of where it drains into Poyang Lake and 130 kilometres south of the Yangtze, with the Jiuling Mountains to the west. Qin armies first brought the area into China, taking it from the Baiyue peoples. In 201 BC the Han named the settlement Nanchang, meaning southern flourishing, and made it seat of Yuzhang Commandery. As Hongzhou from 589, it became the centre of Jiangxi, which by the twelfth century was China’s most populous province.
Its best-known monument is the Tengwang Pavilion, built in 653 and made famous in 675 by Wang Bo’s poetic preface. Destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly, most recently during fighting in 1929, it took its present form in the 1980s. Nanchang served as the Southern Tang’s southern capital from 959, carried the name Longxing from 1164 to 1368, and under the Ming housed so many exiled imperial relatives, about a quarter of the population, that Matteo Ricci came here while seeking a route to Beijing.
Decline followed the Taiping Rebellion and the shift of trade from overland routes to coastal steamers. On 1 August 1927, pro-communist officers seized the city and held it for only a few days, but their troops and organisation became the seed of the People’s Liberation Army. Japanese forces attacked in March 1939 during a hard-fought battle for the city.
In 1949 it had about 275,000 people and little industry beyond food processing; its first railway, to Jiujiang, had opened only in 1915. Industrialisation brought cotton textiles, paper, machinery, aircraft and cars, including Ford Transit vans assembled through the Jiangling joint venture. The 2020 census counted about 6.26 million residents, and summers are among the hottest of any provincial capital.
Source: Nanchang
