Nanjing Erects Steles or Pavilions for the first 12 Thousand-year-old Town

In recent years, due to rapid urban development, adjustment of administrative division and renovation of old city areas, many administrative towns were changed to communities in Nanjing and some thousand-year-old towns are gone. Many people feel regretted for those ancient towns and old placenames that representing history.

In order to make up for the regrets, Nanjing Civil Affairs Bureau has carried out thousand-year-old town recognition, steles or pavilions erection in Nanjing since this year. Through district and county submission, expert appraisal, finally, the first batch of 12 ancient towns have been recognized including Jiangning, Xiongzhou and Chunxi.

Xue Guang, executive director of Nanjing Administrative Division Placename Association and placename expert, said that, standards for recognizing thousand-year-old towns are: at least one-thousand year historical evolvement; a spontaneous town different from the current administrative town. Since this year, he and several other experts have been to these towns to collect data, verify materials and compose epigraph for each ancient town. Content of the epigraph usually includes geographical location of the town, historical backgournd, cultural heritage, folk culture, etc. Each of the 12 ancient towns has many legendary stories and a history of more than one thousand years. Some historical sites show that back to ancient times, there were human beings living there. These ancient towns are witness to history. By recognizing them and erecting steles or pavilions, we respect the history and leave a valuable cultural heritage to the coming generations.

Xu Zhao, placename expert introduced that, based on available historical data, Xiaodanyang of Jiangning is the oldest among the 12 towns. It has a history of over 2000 years. In the legend of Wu Taibo Going South, his starts from Xiaodanyang. Wu Taibo moves northeast to the current Danyang area and establishes the capital, Zhufang City. The earliest place named Danyang in the history is here. Later, with the emergence of Danyang County of Zhenjiang, this place is called Xiaodanyang . 210 B.C., Emperor Qin Shihuang went east to the Qiantang River via Danyang. Great Poet Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty also came here once and wrote a poem.

Taowu Town is located in the south of Jiangning District. In the history, Taowu was very prosperous. It was established during the Jingde Period of the Song Dynasty. It was initially named Jinling Town and renamed as Taowu Town. In the Song Dynasty, the families surnamed Tao and Wu always lived there so the place was called Taowupu and later Taowu Town. In late Qing Dynasty, Taowu was one of the 3 biggest towns in Jiangning and it was still an important town of Jiangning during the period of the Republic of China.

Xueguang introduced that, as the city develops, names of some old towns were changed to administrative division names and some names are gone. Since these two towns were very famous in the history, they are listed as the first batch of thousand-year-old towns despite of their administrative cancellation.