Shaoguan Municipality

In 265 A.D., Sun Wu of the Three Kingdoms (220-280) established Shixing Prefecture, which had under its jurisdiction six counties including Qujiang and Shixing (an area almost equivalent to the present northern Guangdong) and under its governance Qujiang (the present urban area). In the year 589, Shixing Prefecture was changed to Shaozhou, which was named after Mount Shaoshi, a scenic spot located in the north of the prefecture. This name was later adopted by different dynasties. Under the rule of Republic of China (1912-1949), different administrations were successively established in this part of Guangdong Province; namely Nanshaolian Prefecture, Nanshaolian Region, Lingnan Region, Nanshaolian Administrative Region, Northern Region, Northwestern Region, Second Administrative and Supervising Region.

From September to October 1949, various counties in northern Guangdong were liberated one after another from the former regime. In November 1949, the Government of Guangdong Province established Beijiang Ad Hoc Administrative Committee, which had under its jurisdiction 17 counties and cities such as Shaoguan City and Qujiang County. In January 1950, Shaoguan Municipality became a prefecture-level municipality and in the same year Beijiang Ad Hoc Administrative Committee was changed to Beijiang Prefecture. In 1952, Beijiang Prefecture was canceled and Yuebei Administrative Region was established. In 1956, Yuebei Administrative Region was canceled and Shaoguan Prefecture was established. In 1958, Shaoguan Municipality became a county-level municipality. In 1970, prefectures were changed to regions. In November 1975, Shaoguan Municipality was upgraded to a prefecture-level municipality, and it had under its jurisdiction Qujiang County. In 1983, Shaoguan Region was canceled and all the counties under its jurisdiction came under Shaoguan Municipality. In September 1984, the municipality had under its jurisdiction 3 urban districts, 9 counties and 3 autonomous counties. After the readjustment of the administrative regions in 1988, the municipality has jurisdiction over 3 districts and 8 counties.

Shaoguan is an important road transportation hub in South China, an important land passage between the north of China, the middle and lower reaches of Changjiang (Yangtze) River and South China coast, and a traditional commodity distribution center in the border area of the three provinces of Guangdong, Jiangxi and Hunan. Beijing-Guangzhou Railway, Beijing- Zhuhai Expressway and National Highway 106 run through the municipality in the north-south direction and National Highway 323 in the west-east direction. The expressway mileage from the city proper to Guangzhou is 198 kilometers long. The municipality itself has 3,882 kilometers of highways with high-level and lower-high-level road surface, and the city proper has direct highways of Grade B or above to all the cities and counties of the municipality.

Shaoguan is a key forest zone in China, a center of timber forest, water-source forest, natural forest and a key center of bamboo of Guangdong, and an ecological barrier for the Pearl River Delta. The whole municipality has a forestland of 1.27 million hectares, a live stumpage of 64.65 million cubic meters and a forest coverage rate of 71%, ranking first in Guangdong Province. Shaoguan, with rich resources of minerals, energy, land, water and sightseeing is called the home of China's nonferrous metals. The municipality has 49 kinds of minerals with proved reserves and 218 mineral deposits, and the main minerals include coal, lead, zinc, copper, iron, tungsten, antimony, cement limestone and granite, of which 35 kinds rank top three and 23 kinds top one in the Province. The exploitable capacity of the hydroelectric resources is 1.21 million kilowatts, including 600,000 kilowatts potentials.

Shaoguan is an important power-generating center in Guangdong, being capable of an installed capacity of nearly 2.4 million kilowatts and an annual generation capacity of 10 billion kilowatt-hours. The municipality has an advanced modern communications system, with an optic-fiber transmission network of 3,000 kilometers of large capacity and high efficiency, a long-distance automatic exchange capacity of 20,000 terminals, electric lines of 30,000 and a basic multimedia and high-speed broad-band communications network. The municipality has a telephone exchange capacity of 770,000 lines, fixed telephone subscribers 520,000, mobile phone subscribers 200,000, broadcast paging subscribers of 170,000, Internet subscribers of 50,000 and telephone penetration rate of 23 lines per hundred persons.

Shaoguan has established service organizations for international exchanges, such as customs, port, commodity inspection, animal and plant quarantine, and health quarantine. There are 5 customs ports including Urban Bridge, Station South, Lechang Railway Station, Pingnan, Shaogang Port Special Loading Site. Their annual cargo throughput totals 300,000 tons. The municipality also has two checking grounds in the city proper and Lechang for Hong Kong and Macao container trailers. Shaoguan Port offers one-stop service of customs declaration, checking, loading, storage and transportation by providing direct customs declaration and customs transfer and connection service, direct route to Hong Kong from the railway port, direct sea and land transportation of containers to different places of the world, direct container trailers from the port, direct export through customs declaration in Shaoguan and direct arrival in Shaoguan for customs checking of imported goods.

Shaoguan has a long history and numerous cultural sites. Nanhua Temple, located in Qujiang and a key national temple, is the birthplace where the Sixth Patriarch Huineng promoted the Southern Chan Sect Buddhism and is called the ancestral home of Southern Chan Sect. The temple has the immortal remain of the Sixth Patriarch Huineng for worshippers and keeps the Sixth Master's kasaya robe embroidered with gold threads and 1,000 Buddhist images and the imperial edict granted by Empress Wu Zetian in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Yunmen Temple is the birthplace of Yunmen Sect, one of the five Chan Sects. There are other cultural attractions; namely, biological fossils of remote antiquity, relics of the ancients' sites, Moya Carved Stone, ancient pagoda, Yao Ethnic Minority Village and Hakka Round House. And there are numerous natural scenes such as Mount Danxia, which is located in Renhua County and is an AAAA-level national natural attraction, national geological park, and China's geological and geomorphic natural protection areas. Ruyuan Grand Canyon attraction is a 300-meter-long canyon. At the bottom of the canyon one can see a majestic waterfall rushing down from atop. Of the ten national-level and provincial-level nature reserves, most belong to the primeval forest ecological system.