TA-YEH

Pinyin Daye, town in eastern Hupeh sheng (province), China. Ta-yeh is situated on the south bank of the Yangtze River near Huang-shih and about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Han-k'ou (Wu-han). The site is low-lying and has many swamps and lakes, but to the northwest of the town there is a belt of hills containing iron deposits. These had been known from early times, and the T'ang dynasty (618907) had a government smelter there in the 8th century. A county was established there in 955 under the Nan-t'ang State, and its name means great smelter. In the 10th and 11th centuries the area also produced copper. The town's modern importance, however, began in 1890, when a factory was built at Han-k'ou to produce steel rails for the railway projected between Peking and Han-k'ou. Iron-ore deposits were sent from Ta-yeh by rail to the Yangtze at Huang-shih for shipment to Han-k'ou. The enterprise, however, suffered from inappropriate equipment, bad management, and lack of fuel, and in 1895 the government turned it over to private interests. In about 1906 the Han-yang Ironworks of Han-k'ou, the Ta-yeh iron mines, and the coal mines at P'ing-hsiang in Kiangsi province were incorporated into a single concern, the Han-Yeh-P'ing Iron and Coal Company. This company experienced financial difficulties and by 1913 was entirely in the hands of its Japanese creditors. Ta-yeh was until 1915 the only major producer of iron ore in China, but by the 1930s it was increasingly rivaled by Japanese-controlled mines and steelworks in Manchuria (Northeast Provinces). Although iron ore continued to be shipped to Japan from Ta-yeh, the amounts diminished. Between 1939 and 1945 the Japanese brought Ta-yeh back into production, both for pig iron and for steel, although on a relatively small scale. After 1949, under the Communist government, Ta-yeh became the site of a steel plant, subordinate to the vast new iron and steel complex at Han-k'ou, which came into large-scale operation in 1957. Steel production used not only local pig iron but also large quantities of low-phosphorus iron from Yang-ch'an in Shansi province. Vast quantities of ore were also shipped to the iron and steel complex at Han-k'ou. Ta-yeh is also the site of a thermal power plant, using anthracite coal from the O-nan coalfields, which is a major power source for Huang-shih and Han-k'ou. There is also a large chemical fertilizer plant, as well as textile mills using the cotton that grows abundantly in the surrounding plain area. Copper is mined in the region. Pop. (mid-1980s est.) fewer than 10,000.