Cangzhou () is a

prefecture-level city A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure. During the Republican era, many of China' ...

in eastern

Hebei Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, an ...

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

, People's Republic of China. At the 2020 census, Cangzhou's built-up (''or metro'') area made of Yunhe, Xinhua districts and Cang County largely being conurbated had a population of 1,421,843 inhabitants, while the prefecture-level administrative unit in total has a population of 7,300,783. It lies approximately from the major port city of

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popu ...

, and from

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

History

Cangzhou is reported to have been founded in the

Southern and Northern Dynasties The Northern and Southern dynasties () was a period of political division in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin dynasty. It is sometimes considered as ...

period (420−589 CE).

Administrative divisions

Cangzhou City comprises 2 districts, 4

county-level cities A county-level municipality (), county-level city or county city, formerly known as prefecture-controlled city (1949–1970: ; 1970–1983: ), is a county-level administrative division of the People's Republic of China. County-level ...

, 9

counties A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

and 1 autonomous county.

Economics

Cangzhou's urban center is a heavily industrial city, but the city's administrative territory also includes strongly agricultural areas, and is well known in China for its

Chinese jujube Jujube (), sometimes jujuba, known by the scientific name ''Ziziphus jujuba'' and also called red date, Chinese date, and Chinese jujube, is a species in the genus '' Ziziphus'' in the buckthorn family Rhamnaceae. Description It is a smal ...

s (Chinese dates) and pear (widely known under the export name of ''Tianjin Ya Pear''). The North China Oil Field is within Cangzhou City's jurisdiction. Cangzhou also encompasses a large fishing port and the coal-exporting Huanghua Harbour.

Geography and transportation

Cangzhou is located in eastern

, immediately to the south of

, near the coast of the

Bohai Sea The Bohai Sea () is a marginal sea approximately in area on the east coast of Mainland China. It is the northwestern and innermost extension of the Yellow Sea, to which it connects to the east via the Bohai Strait. It has a mean depth of ...

of the Pacific Ocean. Bordering prefecture-level cities are

Hengshui Hengshui () is a prefecture-level city in southern Hebei province, People's Republic of China, bordering Shandong to the southeast. At the 2010 census its population was 4,340,373 inhabitants whom 522,147 lived in the built-up (''or metro'') are ...

to the southwest,

Baoding Baoding (), formerly known as Baozhou and Qingyuan, is a prefecture-level city in central Hebei province, approximately southwest of Beijing. As of the 2010 census, Baoding City had 11,194,382 inhabitants out of which 2,176,857 lived in the b ...

to the west, and

Langfang Langfang () is a prefecture-level city of Hebei Province, which was known as Tianjin Prefecture until 1973. It was renamed Langfang Prefecture after Tianjin became a municipality and finally upgraded into a prefecture-level city in 1988. Lang ...

to the north. It lies on the

Beijing–Shanghai Railway The Beijing–Shanghai railway or Jinghu railway () is a railway line between Beijing and Shanghai. The line has a total length of and connects the municipalities of Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai, as well as the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, ...

. The G1811 Huanghua–Shijiazhuang Expressway connects Cangzhou to Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, and is linked to

via both the

G2 Beijing–Shanghai Expressway The Beijing–Shanghai Expressway designated as G2 and commonly abbreviated as Jinghu Expressway is a major expressway of China, linking the capital Beijing in the north to Shanghai on the central coast. It extends 1262 kilometres in length, and ...

and

G3 Beijing–Taipei Expressway The Beijing–Taipei Expressway (), designated as G3 and commonly known as the Jingtai Expressway (), is a partially completed expressways of China, Chinese expressway that, if fully constructed, would connect Mainland China with Taiwan. Current ...

, which are concurrent within the province, and to

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

via G2. Cangzhou's Huanghua Harbour is the end of a main Chinese coal shipping railway, the Shuohuang Railway. Other major highways serving Cangzhou's urban area are

China National Highway 104 China National Highway 104 (G104) runs from Beijing to Pingtan via Jinan, Xuzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Taizhou and Fuzhou. It runs to approximately 2606 km, and, on a map, runs southeast towards Nanjing and Hangzhou before turning south-sout ...

and

307 __NOTOC__ Year 307 ( CCCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Severus and Maximinus (or, less frequently, year 1060 ...

. Major airports located closest to Cangzhou include Beijing Capital Airport and Tianjin Airport. The Grand Canal passes directly through Cangzhou, and a district of Cangzhou (Yunhe District) is named after it.

Climate

Cangzhou has a four-season,

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal oscil ...

-influenced

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freezing ...

semi-arid climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of sem ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (born 1951), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author and ...

''BSk/Dwa''), with cold, dry winters, and hot, humid summers. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from in January to in July, while the annual mean is . A majority of the annual precipitation of occurs in July and August alone. With possible monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 49% in July to 65% in October, the city receives 2,663 hours of bright sunshine annually.

Culture

The city has historically been known in China for its '' wushu'' (Chinese martial arts) and acrobatics (specifically, the ''Wu Qiao'' school). Cangzhou is also famed for its historic thousand-year-old 40-ton sculpture, the

Iron Lion of Cangzhou The Iron Lion of Cangzhou (), also known as the "Sea Guard Howler", is a cast iron sculpture located in Cangzhou City, in Hebei Province, China, about 180 km (110 mi) southwest of Beijing. Cast in the Later Zhou dynasty in 953, the iro ...

. The sculpture is reportedly the largest cast-iron sculpture in the world, cast in 953 in the

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (), from 907 to 979, was an era of political upheaval and division in 10th-century Imperial China. Five dynastic states quickly succeeded one another in the Central Plain, and more than a dozen concu ...

period. The famed lion has even given its name to a locally brewed

beer Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...

(iron lion beer, 铁狮啤酒) and is a symbol of the city. Cangzhou is home to a traditional Chinese form of musical performing arts,

Kuaiban Dagu ''Kuaibanshu'' () is a form of oral storytelling performance that is popular in northern China. It is a type of ''shuochang'', somewhat similar to Vietnamese language, Vietnamese vè or rapping. Background Kuaiban literally means ''fast boards''. ...

. The city hosts seven mosques for Muslim adherents (mostly

Hui The Hui people ( zh, c=, p=Huízú, w=Hui2-tsu2, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Хуэйзў, ) are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the n ...

). One of them, the West Mosque, has collected at its museum one of China's best collections of Islamic manuscripts and artefacts.

Demographics and society

Cangzhou, though predominated by the

Han Chinese The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive va ...

majority, is home to a sizable population of the

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

Hui minority. Intermarriage occasionally occurs between the majority Han and the Hui, but stereotypes of Hui still exist among Cangzhou's Han residents, and some tensions remain. Migration to Hebei province and Cangzhou by

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

Muslim minorities (generally ethnic

Uighurs The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghu ...

) is increasing.

Language

The dominant

first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

of Cangzhou's population is a variety of the northeastern

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

termed Cangzhou, and is a variety of

Ji Lu Mandarin Jilu or Ji–Lu Mandarin, formerly known as Beifang Mandarin "Northern Mandarin", is a dialect of Mandarin Chinese spoken in the Chinese provinces of Hebei (Jì) and the western part of Shandong (Lǔ) and Xunke, Tangwang & Jiayin counties ...

. There are some similarities with the Tianjin variety and the

variety of Mandarin, but both are considered distinct groups from that of Cangzho

Dialects of the Cangzhou area vary between localities and counties, though are generally mutual intelligibility, intelligible among each other.

Municipal government

The city, like all other Chinese administrative divisions, has a party committee, the People's government, the People's Congress, and the Political consultative conference.

Military

Cangzhou is home to the Cangzhou Airbase of the

People's Liberation Army Air Force The People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF; ), also known as the Chinese Air Force (中国空军) or the People's Air Force (人民空军), is an aerial service branch of the People's Liberation Army, the regular armed forces of the Peo ...

Sports

Shijiazhuang Ever Bright moved to Cangzhou and changed their name to Cangzhou F.C., they play at the

Cangzhou Stadium Cangzhou Stadium is a football stadium in Cangzhou, China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with ...

Education

Cangzhou Normal University (): now it has 871 teacher staff, including 607 full-time teachers, 233 people with the title of deputy senior or above, and 405 people with master's and doctor's degrees. The school motto is "knowing, morality, knowledge and behaviour, innovation" (). There is one international school in Cangzhou, the

Cangzhou Zhenhua Korean International School Cangzhou () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Hebei province, People's Republic of China. At the 2020 census, Cangzhou's built-up (''or metro'') area made of Yunhe, Xinhua districts and Cang County largely being conurbated had a populatio ...

().Schools Approved by the Ministry of Education For Enrolling Children of Foreign Nationals

.

Ministry of Education of China The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China is a cabinet-level department under the State Council responsible for basic education, vocational education, higher education, and other educational affairs across the country. The Mi ...

. Retrieved on 17 August 2015.

Notable residents

* Sun Yue (1985), fifth Chinese national to play in the NBA *

Wang Zi-Ping Wang Zi-Ping (1881–1973, Xiao'erjing: ) was a Chinese Muslim practitioner of Chinese Martial Arts and traditional medicine from Cangzhou, Cangxian Cang County or Cangxian () is a county of Hebei province, China. It is under the administrat ...

(1881–1973), Chinese martial arts grandmaster

References

*DuBois, Thomas. ''The Sacred Village: Social Change and Religious Life in Rural North China''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005.

External links

Article about the Cangzhou Lion
(in Chinese)
"Chinese 'serial killer' arrested"

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...

. 15 November 2003. (Incident in Cangzhou) {{Authority control Cities in Hebei Prefecture-level divisions of Hebei