Nanjing’s position on the Yangzi offered strategic protection and made it an important gateway for trade and shipping to the regions farther west. It is 2 1/2 hours west of Shanghai by tourist express train. Nanjing is hot and humid in summer, considered one of China’s four “furnace cities.” Winters are cold, with frequent rain or drizzle and low visibility.

Nanjing has an extremely rich and complex history, derived from its position as a political and economic center for the agriculturally rich southeast China region. Habitation in the area goes back some 5,000 years, documented by the discovery of several prehistoric, Shang and Zhou era sites. During the Warring States period there was a walled city that had an armaments foundry there.

After the break up of the Han dynasty, Nanjing became the capital of a number of short-lived dynasties, especially for the southern dynasties during the 4th-6th century period of division between barbarian Northern and native Chinese Southern dynasties. At that time Nanjing was also a center for the propagation of Buddhism. When China was reunified under the Sui in the late 6th century, the Sui ruler established his capital at present day Xi’an and demolished all the old palace buildings at Nanjing. The building of the Grand Canal, however, aided the economic importance of the city, and it became a center of weaving, especially of brocade, and of metal foundries.

Nanjing’s decline lasted until the founding of the Ming dynasty, when it was established as the capital of the Ming by its founder, Zhu Yuanzhang (the Hongwu Emperor). Hongwu repopulated the city with in-migrant craftsmen and wealthy families from elsewhere in southeastern China, meanwhile deporting most of the resident population to far away Yunnan. He also undertook a massive building program, including an imperial palace and massive city walls, parts of which still stand. The city became an administrative center and the site of imperial examinations, as well as a manufacturing center.

The third Ming emperor, known by his reign title a the Yongle emperor, usurped the throne from his brother and moved the capital back to Beijing, close to his princely power base and the former capital during the Yuan. Nanjing continued as a secondary capital, with its own shadow bureaucracy, a site for an imperial university and metropolitan examinations, and an important textile production center. When the Manchus invaded north China Nanjing held out briefly as a center of Ming resistance, but eventually fell.