Origin of name 河 hé - (Yellow) River
北 běi - north
"north of the Yellow River"
Administration type Province
Capital (and largest city) Shijiazhuang
Area 187,700 km2 (12th)
Population (2004) 68,090,000 (6th)
- Density 363/km2 (11th)
GDP (2004)
- per capita CNY 876.9 billion (6th)
CNY 12,900 (11th)
HDI (2005) 0.766 (medium) (12th)
Major nationalities Han - 96%
Manchu - 3%
Hui - 0.8%
Mongol - 0.3%
Prefecture-level 11 divisions
County-level 172 divisions
Township-level 2207 divisions
Hebei (Chinese: 河北; Pinyin: Héb?i; Wade-Giles: Ho-pei; Postal map spelling: Hopeh) is a northern province of the Peoples Republic of China. Its one-character abbreviation is "冀" (pinyin: jì), named after Ji Province (冀州 Jì Zhōu), a Han Dynasty province (zhou) that included southern Hebei. The name Hebei means "north of the (Yellow) River".
Zhili (Traditional Chinese: 直隸; Simplified Chinese: 直隶; Hanyu Pinyin: Zhílì; Wade-Giles: Chih-li), meaning "Directly Ruled (by the Imperial Court)", was the name of Hebei before 1928.
Hebei completely surrounds Beijing and Tianjin municipalities (which also border each other). It borders Liaoning to the northeast, Inner Mongolia to the north, Shanxi to the west, Henan to the south, and Shandong to the southeast. Bohai Bay of the Yellow Sea is to the east. A small part of Hebei, an exclave disjointed from the rest of the province, is wedged between the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin.
A common alternate name for Hebei is Yānzhào (燕赵), after the state of Yan and state of Zhao that existed here during the Warring States Period of early Chinese history.
History
Plains in Hebei were the home of Peking man, a group of Homo erectus that lived in the area around 200,000 to 700,000 years ago.
During the Spring and Autumn Period (722 BC - 476 BC), Hebei was under the rule of the states of Yan (燕) in the north and Jin (晉) in the south. Also during this period, a nomadic people known as Dí (狄) invaded the plains of northern China and established Zhongshan (中山) in central Hebei. During the Warring States Period (403 BC - 221 BC), Jin was partitioned, and much of its territory within Hebei went to Zhao (赵).
The Qin Dynasty unified China in 221 BC. The Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) ruled the area under two provinces (zhou), Youzhou Province (幽州) in the north and Jizhou Province (冀州) in the south. At the end of the Han Dynasty, most of Hebei came under the control of warlords Gongsun Zan in the north and Yuan Shao further south; Yuan Shao emerged victorious out of the two, but he was soon defeated by rival Cao Cao (based further south, in modern-day Henan) in the Battle of Guandu in 200. Hebei then came under the rule of the Kingdom of Wei (one of the Three Kingdoms), established by the descendants of Cao Cao.
After the invasions of northern nomadic peoples at the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, the chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern and Southern Dynasties ensued. Hebei, firmly in North China and right at the northern frontier, changed hands many times, being controlled at various points in history by Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, and Later Yan. Northern Wei reunified northern China in 440, but split into half into 534, with Hebei coming under the eastern half (first Eastern Wei; then Northern Qi), which had its capital at Ye (鄴), near modern Linzhang, Hebei. The Sui Dynasty reestablished Chinas unity in 589.
During the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907) the area was formally designated "Hebei" (Yellow Rivers north) for the first time. During the earlier part of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, Hebei was fragmented among several regimes, though it was eventually unified by Li Cunxu, who established the Later Tang Dynasty (923 - 936). The next dynasty to come, the Later Jin Dynasty under Shi Jingtang, posthumously known as Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin, ceded much of modern-day northern Hebei to the Khitan Liao Dynasty in the north; this territory, called The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, became a major problem for Chinas defense against the Khitans for the next century, since it lay within the Great Wall.
During the Northern Song Dynasty (960 - 1127), the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of hot contention between Song China and the Liao Dynasty. The Southern Song Dynasty that came after abandoned all of North China to the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) in 1127, including Hebei.
The Mongol Yuan Dynasty divided China into provinces but did not establish Hebei as a province. The Ming Dynasty ruled Hebei as "Beizhili" (北直隸, pinyin: Běizhílì), meaning "Northern Directly Ruled", because the area contained and was directly ruled by the imperial capital, Beijing; the "Northern" designation was used because there was a southern counterpart covering present-day Jiangsu and Anhui. When the Manchu Qing Dynasty came to power in 1644, they abolished the southern counterpart, and Hebei became known as "Zhili", or simply "Directly Ruled". During the Qing Dynasty, the northern borders of Zhili extended deep into what is now Inner Mongolia, and overlapped in jurisdiction with the leagues of Inner Mongolia.
The Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1912 and was replaced by the Republic of China. Within a few years, China descended into civil war, with regional warlords vying for power. Since Zhili was so close to Peking (Beijing), the capital, it was the site of frequent wars, including the Zhiwan War, the First Zhifeng War and the Second Zhifeng War. With the success of the Northern Expedition, a successful campaign by the Kuomintang to end the rule of the warlords, the capital was moved from Peking (Beijing) to Nanking (Nanjing). As a result, the name of Zhili was changed to Hebei to reflect that fact that it had a standard provincial administration, and that the capital had been relocated elsewhere.
The founding of the Peoples Republic of China saw several changes: the region around Chengde, previously part of Rehe Province (historically part of Manchuria), and the region around Zhangjiakou, previously part of Chahar Province (historically part of Inner Mongolia), were merged into Hebei, extending its borders northwards beyond the Great Wall. The capital was also moved from Baoding to the upstart city of Shijiazhuang, and, for a short period, to Tianjin.
On July 28, 1976, Tangshan was struck by a powerful earthquake, the Tangshan earthquake, the deadliest of the 20th century with over 240,000 killed. A series of smaller earthquakes struck the city in the following decade.
In 2005, Chinese archaeologists unearthed what is being called the Chinese equivalent of Italys Pompeii. The find in question, located near Liumengchun Village (柳孟春村) in Cang County in east-central Hebei, is a buried settlement destroyed nearly 700 years ago by a major earthquake. Another possible explanation may be the four successive floods which hit the area around the time when the settlement met its sudden end. The settlement appears to have been a booming commercial center during the Song Dynasty.
