the encyclopedic entry of Cangzhou

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Administrative divisions

Cangzhou City comprises 2 districts for Cangzhou's city proper:

Yunhe District (运河区)
Xinhua District (新华区)

4 county-level cities that have relatively large urban areas:

Botou (泊头市)
Renqiu (任丘市)
Huanghua (黄骅市)
Hejian (河间市)

10 counties (mostly rural):

Cang County (沧县), which surrounds Cangzhou's urban center/city proper
Qing County (青县)
Xian County (献县)
Dongguang County (东光县)
Haixing County (海兴县)
Yanshan County (盐山县)
Suning County (肃宁县)
Nanpi County (南皮县)
Wuqiao County (南皮县)
Mengcun Hui Autonomous County (孟村回族自治县)

Economics

Cangzhou's urban center is a heavily industrial city but the city's administrative territory also includes strongly agricultural areas, and is renowned in China for its Chinese jujube fruits and Ya pears (well-known by the export name of Tianjin Ya Pear). The North China Oil Field is within Cangzhou City's jurisdiction. Cangzhou also encompasses a large fishing port and the modern, coal-exporting Huanghua Harbour.

Geography and transportation

Cangzhou is located to the south of Beijing, near the coast of the Bohai Sea of the Pacific Ocean. It lies on the Jinghu (Beijing-Shanghai) railway line and the notional Jinghu Axis, a geographic and transportation corridor between Beijing and Shanghai to the south.

The Shicang Expressway connects Cangzhou to Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, and from thence links by road to the Jingshi Expressway leading to Beijing, part of the Jingzhu Expressway connecting all the way to southern China, Hong Kong, and Macau. Cangzhou's Huanghua Harbour is the end of a main Chinese coal shipping railway, the Shuohuang Line.

Major airports located closest to Cangzhou include Beijing Capital Airport and Tianjin Airport.

Climate

Cangzhou's climate is mild to warm in the summer to cold in the winter, as in most of Hebei and north China. In winter months, snowfall is common.

History

Cangzhou is reported to have been founded in the Southern and Northern Dynasties period (420-589 CE).

Culture

The city has historically been known in China for its wushu–or martial arts–and acrobatics (specifically, the Wu Qiao school). Cangzhou is also famed for its historic thousand-year-old 40-ton sculpture, the Iron Lion of Cangzhou. The sculpture is reportedly the largest cast-iron sculpture in the world, cast in 953 in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The famed lion has even given its name to a locally-brewed beer and is a symbol of the city.

Cangzhou is home to a traditional Chinese form of musical performing arts, Kuaiban Dagu.

The city's Hui residents have seven mosques. One of them, the West Mosque, has collected at its museum one of Chinas's best collections of Islamic manuscripts and artefacts.

Demographics and society

Cangzhou, though predominated by the Han Chinese majority, is home to a sizable population of the Muslim Hui minority. Intermarriage occasionally occurs between the majority Han and the Hui, but stereotypes of Hui still exist among Cangzhou's Han residents, and some tensions remain. Migration to Hebei province and Cangzhou by Xinjiang Muslim minorities (generally ethnic Uighurs) is increasing.

Language

The dominant first language of Cangzhou's population is a variety of the northeastern Mandarin dialect continuum (may be considered Ji Lu Mandarin), with some similarities with the Tianjin dialect of Mandarin. Cangzhou-area topolects are partially mutually intelligible with standard Mandarin. Dialects vary between localities, including among the many rural and urbanized areas, though are generally intelligible among each other.

Municipal government

The city, like all other Chinese administrative divisions, has a party committee, the People's government, the People's Congress, and the Political consultative conference.