Píngjìn

The city rebuilt by the Sòng was battered again when the Jīn overthrew the Northern Sòng and again when the Mongols overthrew the Jīn, and it was the Míng who restored it on a grand scale. Zhū Yuánzhāng made his third son, Zhū Gāng, Prince of Jìn and seated him here, and in 1376 the prince's father-in-law Xiè Chéng pushed the walls out to the east, south and north, the Fén River blocking the west, until the princely palace lay inside a city three times the size of the Sòng town. Between 1381 and 1391 the prince enlarged the Chóngshàn Temple in memory of his mother, Empress Mǎ, making it the greatest monastery in Shānxī, with nearly a thousand halls.

The princely city did not survive the fall of the Míng. In 1644 the defenders burned the southern suburb to hold off Lǐ Zìchéng's army, the Qīng took Tàiyuán that September, and in 1646 a fire in the old Jìn palace left the north and east of the city in ashes. Under the Qīng, trade and people gathered in the south, and Tàiyuán never regained its Míng size.