Chapter 52 Section 4 Mancheng and its names in the Qing Dynasty

Mancheng, as the name suggests, is a city inhabited by Manchu people.In the first year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1644 A.D.), the Manchus entered the customs, set their capital in Beijing and occupied the inner city of Beijing. The officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners and their families were arranged according to the directions of the Eight Banners, making the inner city of Beijing a city where the officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners concentrated.Because the Eight Banners of the capital are dominated by the Eight Banners of Manchuria, the inner city of Beijing can be regarded as the first Manchurian city in China in the Qing Dynasty.

In the process of unifying China in the Qing Dynasty, in order to suppress and prevent the resistance of the Han nationality and various ethnic minorities, or to resist the invasion of foreign nations, officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners were continuously dispatched to garrison various places.In this process, part of the original city was occupied, or a new city was planned and built to station Eight Banners officers and soldiers, which coexisted with the city where the original Han people lived, so it was called Mancheng.The city that Mancheng relied on was originally dominated by Han people, and it was called Hancheng or Old City accordingly.By the mid-Qing Dynasty, there were more than 20 large and small cities in Zhibei Province (18 provinces in the Mainland), such as Taiyuan, Youyu, Suiyuan (now Dongcheng District, Hohhot City), Guihua (now Xicheng District, Hohhot City), Xi'an, Ningxia, Tongguan, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Jingzhou (now Jiangling, Hubei), Jiangning (now Nanjing), Hangzhou, Jingkou (now Zhenjiang, Jiangsu), Zhapu (Zhapu Town, Pinghu County, Zhejiang), Fuzhou, Dezhou, Qingzhou, Kaifeng, Tianjin , Baoding, Liangzhou (now Wuwei, Gansu), Zhuanglang (now Yongdeng, Gansu) and so on.In addition, in the northeast and northwest regions, there are more than 20 garrison cities formed along with the garrison.

The outstanding features of Mancheng in the Qing Dynasty are: first, it has a military nature; second, it has been planned and designed; third, it relies on the original city (except for the northeast and northwest garrison cities), so the Mancheng is named after the original city, and has no independent place name.With the decline of the Eight Banners military system and garrison system, especially the huge changes in the social economy since modern times, the composition and function of the city's residents have undergone fundamental changes, and it has developed into an important part of the original relying city, and even developed into a modern city. The center of the city provides an important space for the scale development of the city.