Lianxi District
Lianxi (simplified Chinese: 濂溪区; traditional Chinese: 濂溪區; pinyin: Liánxī Qū) is the name of a district in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, People's Republic of China, taking its name from Mount Lu, which is located inside its jurisdiction boundaries. The vestiges of abandoned temples there indicate a history dating back thousands of years but it is now a popular domestic and foreign tourist attraction as well as home to the mountain resort town of Kuling and the 1,474 metres (4,836 ft) high Mount Lu.
History
The village of Kuling on the slopes of a wide valley in Lushan District was established in 1895 by Edward Selby Little as a sanitarium and rest resort for European and American missionaries in southern China. They naturally built their houses in the colonial style of architecture, and added a church, schools, and sports facilities. It was named by E. S. Little, himself a missionary, as a pun: it is wonderfully cooling after the summer heat in the plains below. It was also a word that sounded conveniently Chinese to the local people, and has been adopted by them. Kuling was run by the missionaries in a Kuling Council that sold the plots of the land and with the proceeds paid for local services and security. In 1936, when most of the missionaries left before the Japanese invaded, Lianxi was returned to Chinese jurisdiction.
Prior to 1949, the President of China, Chiang Kai-shek chose Lianxi as the summer headquarters for his nationalist Kuomintang government, having been introduced to the place by his wife Soong Mei-ling, the daughter of a Shanghai Methodist minister. It was here that in 1946 the U.S. special diplomatic mission representing the President of the United States led by General George C. Marshall met with Chiang Kai-shek to discuss the role of post-World War II China.
After the communist revolution in China in 1949, it became favourite meeting place for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China because Chairman Mao used Chiang Kai-shek's house as one of his holiday homes. It hosted the Eighth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee, also known as the "Lushan Conference" or "Plenum", which began on 23 July and convened on 2 August, 1959. Lianxi also hosted the Second Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee in August 1970.
The movie Lushan Lian, which has been shown in the Lianxi theatre non-stop since 1980, was recognised by Guinness World Records as the longest running movie in theatres. Each ticket sold to this movie is numbered according to ticket sales to date. As of May 2006, this number is close to 140 million tickets.
In 2007, a biography of Grand Canyon pioneer Harvey Butchart entitled Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon by Elias Butler and Tom Myers was published. This book contains several chapters about Mount Lushan where Butchart spent several years as the child of missionaries.[1]
The town was the birthplace of English author Mervyn Peake, and the town where the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pearl Buck met her future husband.
In April 2016, Lushan District was renamed as Lianxi District.
See also
References
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Coordinates: 29°34′21″N 115°58′24″E / 29.57250°N 115.97333°E