Current Time in Yanzhou, China

Yanzhou lies in south-western Shandong province in eastern China, on the broad alluvial plain of the lower Yellow River, and today forms a district of the larger city of Jining. It stands on flat, intensively farmed land where wheat and maize stretch to the horizon, some three hundred kilometres south of Beijing and a similar distance west of the coast. Winters are cold and dry, summers hot and humid, and the Grand Canal passes nearby on its long course between the Yangtze and the north.

Around six hundred thousand people live in the district. Coal is the foundation of its modern economy, since Yanzhou sits above one of the most productive coalfields in eastern China, and the mining group based here grew into one of the largest coal producers in the country, with interests reaching as far as Australia. Around the mines have developed coal chemical plants, power generation, machinery works, papermaking and food processing, while the surrounding countryside remains an important producer of grain, cotton and vegetables.

The name Yanzhou is far older than the town. In classical geography it was one of the nine provinces into which the legendary Emperor Yu divided the land, and the name has been attached to prefectures in this area for more than two thousand years. The settlement served as a regional administrative seat through many dynasties and grew as a canal port under the Ming and Qing, when grain barges carried tribute rice northwards. The poet Li Bai lived nearby for over twenty years during the Tang dynasty, and the Taibai Tower, rebuilt in his memory, recalls his time in the district. Modern industrial development came with the railway in the twentieth century and accelerated after the coalfields were opened.

The most striking monument is the Xinglong Pagoda, a brick tower of thirteen storeys rising more than fifty metres, first built in the Sui dynasty and rebuilt in the Song. Excavation of its underground chamber in the 1990s uncovered a hoard of Buddhist reliquaries and treasures that made national news. The Confucian temple, the old drum tower and the museum of local history preserve other parts of the past, while parks along the canal and around the city lake provide green space. Yanzhou is also a natural base for one of the great cultural landscapes of China, since Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius with its temple, mansion and cemetery, lies only a short distance to the east, and the sacred mountain of Taishan is within easy reach to the north.

The district has a full range of schools, vocational colleges and technical institutes serving the mining and engineering industries, with universities in Jining and Qufu nearby. Yanzhou is a station on the main Beijing to Shanghai railway, high-speed services stop at Qufu East, and expressways link it in every direction.

Yanzhou is important as a centre of Chinese coal production and as a district with deep roots in the classical history of the north China plain.