Gānzhōu

Ganzhou, also called Zhangye, lies in a fertile oasis of the Hexi Corridor, where water running down from the Qilian Mountains feeds the Hei River and the fields around the town, and desert and high mountains squeeze the road between China and the western lands. The Western Wei gave the town the name Ganzhou in 554, after its sweet springs. Marco Polo stayed in the city he called Campichu, and when the Yuan set up Gansu Province in 1286, taking its name from Ganzhou and Suzhou, the capital was here.

Among its most remarkable buildings is the Great Buddha Temple, founded under the Western Xia in 1098. Its vast reclining Buddha made it a famous sanctuary, and it had close ties with the Yuan imperial house. At the start of Ming rule, buildings connected with the imperial family were burned, and reconstruction began in 1411. A painter travelling with an embassy from the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh later described the rebuilt temple and its extent.

Ming Ganzhou was a garrison seat of the Shaanxi Regional Military Commission and the Gansu command, and in 1392 Zhu Ying, Prince of Su, made it his seat. Under the Qing it was the seat of Ganzhou Prefecture. In the late sixteenth century donors helped finance the copying of major Buddhist scriptures in gold for the temple.