Changzhou

About Changzhou

Changzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu, China. It was previously known as Yanling, Lanling, and Jinling. Located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, Changzhou borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the west, Zhenjiang to the northwest, Wuxi to the east, and the province of Zhejiang to the south. The population of the Changzhou Municipality was 5,278,121 at the 2020 census. The city is the birthplace of Zhou Youguang who created the pinyin romanization system.

Human activity in the Changzhou region can be traced back more than 6,000 years to the Neolithic Majiabang culture. The Weidun (previously known as Yudun, 圩墩) site, located in the region, is one of the northernmost major sites of that culture and contains a large cemetery whose use continued into the subsequent Songze culture.

By the Liangzhu period, the region was characterized by the Sidun (寺墩) site, a polity covering approximately 900,000 square meters. The settlement was organized around a central earthen altar, roughly 100 meters in diameter and 20 meters high, surrounded by multiple moats and distinct cemetery clusters. Notably excavations of a high-status burial at the site yielded...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.