|
Chongzuo.org
崇左
Beautiful Scenery and Vietnam Gateway
Water Pagoda built 1621, close to Chongzuo
Chongzuo
(崇左) is a city in China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It is
famous for its scenery (such as the Detian waterfall), a gateway
into
Vietnam and a center of Zhuang culture. Chongzuo's population is
2,260,000. 88% of the people belong to the Zhuang ethnic group. The
rest include Han, Yao, and other ethnic groups.It is home to one of
China?s largest Zhuang populations. From here you can also enter
Vietnam . It is China's biggest manganese producer and the world's
biggest producer of bentonite. Other industries include export
infrastructure, paper, forest products such as timber and turpentine,
building materials, pharmaceuticals, and electronics manufacturing.
Location of Chongzuo
Karast hills close to Chongzuo
video of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
Detian Pubu Detian waterfall
video of Detian waterfall
Chongzuo
is famous for its beautiful natural scenery. The most famous attraction
is Detian Waterfall in Daxing County along the border with Vietnam. The
best time to see the waterfall is in July. There is a geusthouse there
now where you can stay .It is the second largest waterfall along a
national border after Niagara Falls and was one of the crossing points
for China?s army during the brief
Sino-Vietnamese War ( 中越戰爭 )
Sino-Viet
War Memorial
Entertaining
the troops during the war
Nearby
there is the Tongling Gorge accessible only through a cavern from an
adjoining gorge. Rediscovered only recently, it has many species of
endemic plants, found only in the gorge, and used to be used as a
hideout by local bandits whose treasure is occasionally still found in
the cliff-side caves. West of Chongzuo city, there are several forest
and animal preserves, some with minor tourist facilities.
Entering Vietnam
Pingxiang (凭祥市)
The
town of Pingxiang is in the Chongzuo adminstravie area and is a staging
area for onward transport to Vietnam . An early morning train or bus
from Nanning will get you there in a day, from there you can catch a
ride to the Friendship Pass ( Youyi Guan ) to the Vietnamese border .
Friendship Pass
From
there you can continue onward to the Vietnamese town of Lang Son . This
is the area where the Chinese army entered Vietnam during the short
Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 .
Zhuang Culture 壮族
Chongzuo
is one of the earliest centers of Zhuang culture. The Zhuang are an
ethnic group of people who mostly live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region in southern China. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups
officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. Their
population, estimated at 18 million people, puts them second only to
the Han Chinese and makes the Zhuang the largest minority in China.
There is an indigenous Zhuang language, which has been written with
Zhuang logograms based on Chinese characters for over a thousand years,
and now is officially written in Roman letters. Important sites dating
back to the stone age have been found here. Along the Ming River at
Huashan is one of the largest groups of pictographs in China and in the
world. On several cliff faces are hundreds of large red pictographs
depicting a large battle. The red pigment is still bright and vivid and
individual figures, weapons, and animals are easy to distinguish. The
cliffs, part of the sacred Frog Mountain, were important site to the
early Zhuang.
The
Zhuang are of Tai origin, a people who migrated south from central
China roughly 5000 years ago. The Zhuang settled in what is now Guangxi
while other Tai peoples moved to Yunnan. It is suggested the Tai
peoples migrated for food purposes, as the culture developed a unique
irrigation system which was useful for growing rice. As the soil was
terrible for this purpose in Central China, the Tai sought out more
fertile plains. However, it is highly probable that struggles with
emerging Chinese states that rapidly gained power with Mesolithic
(Bronze Age) weapons had something to do with this. Long struggles with
China to avoid destruction (as they were "barbarians") led Tais around
1100 AD to migrate south from Southern China to create the Lao, Thai
and Shan peoples of Indochina, and even as far away as Assam, India.
History of the Chongzuo area
The Sino - French War
In
214 BC, during the Qin dynasty, Chongzuo was part of the Xiang(象郡)
commandry. Chinese general Feng Zicai beat back a French attack here at
the Battle of Zhennan Pass in 1885. Sun Yatsen fired the first canon
shot of the anti-Qing revolution in Chongzuo in 1907. In the 1930?s,
after fomenting rebellion in other parts of Guangxi, Deng Xiaoping
helped organize the peasants and workers here during the Longzhou
rebellion and eventually formed the Red Army's 8th Army. Later, in
1979, the Chinese army invaded Vietnam from here.
The areas under Chongzuo administration are :
Chongzuo has 1 city, 5 counties, 57 towns, 72
townships, 146 residential communities, and 1,724 villages.
City:
* Pingxiang (凭祥市)
Counties:
* Ningming (宁明县)
* Longzhou (龙州县
* Fusui (扶绥县
* Daxin (大新县
* Tiandeng (天等县
|
