Guiyang History

Guiyang City was founded as early as 1283 AD during the Yuan Dynasty. It was originally called Shunyuan, meaning ‘obeying the Mongol rulers’. Originally the area was populated by non-Chinese. The Sui dynasty had a commandery there and this was followed by a prefecture under the Tang Dynasty. At that time the city was, however, no more than military outposts and it was not until the Yuan invasion of southwest China in 1279 that the area was made the seat of an army and a "pacification office." Chinese settlement in the area also started at that time, and, under the Ming and Qing dynasties, the town became a seat of a superior prefecture named Guiyang.

Locally Guiyang was an important administrative and commercial center with two merchant communities consisting of the Sichuan People, who lived in the "new" northern part of the city, and those from Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi province, who lived in the "old" southern part. Nevertheless, until the Sino-Japanese War, Guiyang was simply the capital of one of China's least-developed provinces. Just as elsewhere in the southwest, considerable economic progress was made during the special circumstances of wartime. Road transport infrastructure linking Guiyang with Yunnan province and with Chongqing was established. Construction on the railway from Liuzhou in Guangxi was begun during this time and after 1949 this development was accelerated. Guiyang has become a major provincial city and industrial base. In 1959 the rail network in Guangxi was completed, allowing connection from Guizhou to Chongqing to the north, to Kunming to the west, and Changsha to the east.