The Glorious Ancient Area of Ba

Chongqing is the birthplace of the ancient Ba people. Numerous records prove that the origin of Ba people can be traced back to the remote primitive time of man.

As a union of tribes, the original Ba people lived along rivers in the area of the Daba and the Wushan mountains. With the pass of time and the increase in population, the forefathers of Ba people left the mountainous areas and began their development to the east and the west. They were divided into a few branches, roughly speaking, the Dragon-Snake Bas, the Fish-Tortoise Bas, and the White Tiger Bas. On the foundation of the primitive Ba civilization, the Ba people set up some slavery states based on the union of tribes, forming the Ba culture which is rich in national characteristics and in local features. The White Tiger Bas, the most influential of the three branches, after roaming about for a long time, came to the place of Zhi (the present Fuling area), and then went upstream to what is today's Yuzhong district, and then they set up the State of Ba, with Jiangzhou (present-day Chongqing) as the capital. At the prime time of the State of Ba, according some historical records, the state covered an area that "reaches Yufu (present-day Fengjie) in the east, Bodao (present-day Yibin, Sichuan province) in the west, Hanzhong (present-day southern Shaanxi province) in the north and Qian (present-day northern Guizhou province) and Fu (present-day Fuling) in the south.

The Brilliant Ba-Yu Civilization

Chongqing is a cultural and historic city in China for its long history of more than 3,000 years. The winding Jialing River was called "Water Yu", hence the city today is named by "Yu"for short.

The Ba-Yu civilization is an important integral part of the Chinese civilization.

Archaeological findings show that some 2,040,000 to 2,010,000 years ago, some ancient ape-men, named as "the Wushan Man", lived in today's Wushan area. They were one of the earliest hominids in the world ever found by archaeologists. Some 20,000 years ago, forefathers of Chongqing people lived and worked on this fertile land, and "the Daxi Culture" in east Chongqing and "the Tongliang Culture" in west Chongqing were typical representatives of cultures of the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age respectively.

In the last few decades, a great number of ancient tombs and very rare cultural relics have been unearthed and many archaeological findings have been made from Mawangchang site of Old Stone Age relics, from Wanzhou site of New Stone Age relics, from the site of Daxi Culture in Wushan, from Yufupu site in Fengjie. The rare cultural relics include the chunyu with a tigershaped handle, an ancient bronze musical instrument, the yi bell of Prince Zeng, the coin tree, the Dingfang watch tower, stone plates with pictures carved on them, pottery figurines, boat-shaped coffins, relics found in the tomb of Ming Yuzhen, among other cultural relics of the Ba and Yu culture. These precious relics are witnesses of the glorious history of the Ba-Yu civilization. More than 20 tombs with boat-shaped coffins were excavated at Dongsunba in Banan District and swords, battle-axes and other weapons used by ancient Ba people were unearthed in large numbers. More than 100 symbols of unique pictographs were found on bronze objects, which are yet to be decoded. The stone carvings at Dazu, typical art works of carving of the Tang and Song dynasties, are rare samples of early cultural exchanges between China and the Western world.

Long History of Changes and Development

The ancient Ba-Yu area with Chongqing as the center is one of the birthplaces of the Chinese nation. And this ancient land nurtured the long history of Chongqing.

King Wu of state Zhou defeated King Zhou of state Shang and established the Zhou Dynasty. Then King Wu granted a member of the royal clan the territory of Ba and the title of viscount, who established the State of Ba with Jiangzhou (present-day Chongqing) as the capital. Later, state Qin conquered state Ba and made it the prefecture of Ba, one of the 36 prefectures of China at that time. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the prefecture of Ba was renamed Chuzhou, and during the Sui and Tang dynasties, the area became Yuzhou, and then Gongzhou in Northern Song Dynasty. In 1189, Zhao Chun, a royal prince, was first made Prince of Gong and then emperor Guangzong, and he considered the two events "a double happiness", and so he named Gongzhou as Chongqing (double happiness) and promoted it into a fu. That's how Chongqing got its name. In 1242, the governor of Chuanshaan Silu (later known as Sichuan) moved to Chongqing, which became the political and military center of Sichuan. Toward the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Ming Yuzhen, leader of the Red Turban uprising army, announced himself emperor of the state of Daxia, and made Chongqing its capital in 1363. Chongqing was made capital of Sichuan Province in 1921 (later the provincial government moved to Chengdu in 1935). The city of Chongqing was formally established in 1929. And it became the wartime capital of China and political, economic and cultural center in the rear area between 1937 and 1946 during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Therefore Chongqing was known as "a city that became capital three times".

In the first few years (1950--1954) after the founding of new China, Chongqing was a municipality directly under the central government, and later it became a city directly under the provincial government. On March 14, 1997, Chongqing again became a municipality directly under the central government when a resolution was adopted at the Fifth Session of the Eighth National People's Congress, beginning a new chapter in the development of the city.