HSUAN-HUA

Pinyin Xuanhua city, northwestern Hopeh sheng (province), China. Hsan-hua is situated some 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Chang-chia-k'ou on the upper course of the Yang River. In former times the settlement was in a border district, just inside the Great Wall, between the Inner Mongolian pasturelands and the area of Chinese settlement. Under both the Han (206 BCAD 220) and T'ang (618907) dynasties, it was a strategic frontier prefecture. In 938 it was occupied by the Liao dynasty and for the next four centuries was an important administrative centre for successive dynasties of conquest. With the beginning of the Ming dynasty (13681644), it once more became a Chinese frontier post. In 1430 Hsan-hua became the headquarters of the military command of the northwestern defenses against the Mongols. Under the Ch'ing dynasty (16441911) Hsan-hua remained a large, well-fortified city and a strategic and administrative centre, but the neighbouring city of Chang-chia-k'ou surpassed it as a commercial centre in the 19th century and totally eclipsed it by the end of the Ch'ing (Manchu) period. Hsan-hua remained a secondary collecting centre for grain, wool, hides, and vegetable oils, which were marketed largely by rail via Peking, in Tientsin. In the 20th century Hsan-hua has developed mainly as an industrial centre. In 1918 the Lung-yen Iron and Steel Company, a joint stateprivate enterprise, set up an ironworks there based on the production of nearby iron-ore mines. In the early days, coking coal for the plant had to be hauled by rail some 250 mi from sites in Shansi Province. The mines were further developed during the 1950s and '60s, though, and by the early 1970s, coal was being obtained from nearer locations. Hsan-hua now mainly produces pig iron, which is processed in iron- and steelworks in Peking, T'ai-yan, and Pao-t'ou. Pop. (mid-1970s est.) 100,000300,000.