CH'ENG-TE

Pinyin Chengde, conventional Jehol city in northern Hopeh sheng (province), China. The city is situated in the mountains separating the North China Plain from the plateaus of Inner Mongolia, approximately 110 miles (180 km) northeast of Peking, on the Je Ho (Je River), a small tributary of the Luan River. The Je Ho ("Hot River"), so called because of the various hot springs that discharge into it above Ch'eng-te, gave its name to the city and to the province of which it was the capital. Until comparatively recent times this area, some 43 miles (69 km) north of the Great Wall of China, was occupied by a succession of non-Chinese peoples. It first became a part of China proper under the Liao dynasty (907-1125), when it was the seat of Hsing-hua county in Pei-an prefecture. Under the 12th-century Juchen (Chin) dynasty, Hsing-hua county became part of Hsing-chou, the name of which was retained under the Mongols (1279-1368). With the fall of the Mongols, Chinese authority in the area beyond the Great Wall declined. During the Wei dynasty (220-265/266), Ch'eng-te came under the control of the Hsing-chou Guard, but in the early 15th century it was abandoned by the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), coming under the control of the Chahar (Tsakhar), a Mongol tribe. The Mongols submitted to the Manchus in the late 1620s, but the region became the starting point for many of their incursions into China. In the early 1700s the Ch'ing emperor K'ang-hsi built a summer residence there, calling it Pi-shu-shan-chuang ("Mountain Estate for Escaping the Heat"). It became the usual practice for the Chinese emperor to leave Peking for Ch'eng-te every summer. At about this time the area around Ch'eng-te became one of the first intensively colonized and cultivated areas outside the Great Wall, and Ch'eng-te itself grew into a flourishing city, being given administrative status as a subprefecture, Je-ho Ting, in 1729, and as a prefecture, Ch'eng-te Chou, in 1733. Under the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911/12), Mongol vassal princes assembled annually for a great feast, and the emperor came to receive the visits of foreign envoys. The mission from Britain led by Earl Macartney was received there in 1793. Apart from the palace buildings themselves, which occupied an enclosure some 5 miles (8 km) in circumference, there were also a number of splendid lamaseries (monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism) and many small temples and shrines constructed in the area; two of the largest were imitations of the Potala, the fortress-palace of the Dalai Lamas at Lhasa, Tibet, and of the Trashilhunpo monastery at Zhigatse, Tibet. The palace and monasteries are under government protection and have become major tourist attractions. The city became the seat of the subprefecture of Je-ho in 1742 and a superior prefecture, Ch'eng-te Fu, in 1778, when the area was constituted a part of the province of Chihli, the former name for Hopeh. It was also the seat of a military vice governor after 1738 and of a military governor after 1810. After 1821 the summer visits of the court to Ch'eng-te were gradually discontinued. Late in the 19th century the ban on Chinese settlement in the Inner Mongolian border area was relaxed, and extensive Chinese colonization took place. Under the republic in 1911, Ch'eng-te became a regular county and the surrounding area a special administrative district. In 1928 the Nationalist government established the new province of Jehol, with its capital at Ch'eng-te, and quartered the Cheng-kuei army there as a defense against Japanese expansion from Manchuria. In 1933 the Japanese army overran Jehol, and the area was incorporated into the Japanese-sponsored state of Manchukuo. From 1933 to 1936 the Japanese built a railway linking Ch'eng-te with Chin-chou (Liaoning province) and with the Peking-Mukden (Shen-yang) line, with branches to Ch'ih-feng (Inner Mongolia) and to the coal mines at Pei-p'iao (Liaoning). After the Japanese conquest of northern China in 1937, a further line linked Ch'eng-te directly to Peking, via Mi-yn. The line to Mi-yn was later abandoned and replaced by another route, leaving Ch'eng-te on a spur line. From 1949 Ch'eng-te grew steadily, and from the late 1950s it developed as a heavy-industry centre. There are coal and copper deposits to the south, while in the city itself there is a textile industry processing cotton and hemp. The city still retains an important role as a commercial and collecting centre. In 1956 Jehol province was abolished, and Ch'eng-te again became a part of Hopeh. Pop. (1990) 246,799.