Yángqǔ

Yángqǔ was the county that held Tàiyuán, the capital of Shānxī, and its lands ran north from the city walls to the passes of Shílǐng and Tiānmén, the gates of the Taiyuan basin toward the frontier. By the Jīn its seat shared the prefectural city, and under the Yuán, Míng and Qīng the provincial, prefectural and county offices all stood within the same walls.

The Míng made the city a princely seat. Zhū Gāng, third son of the Hóngwǔ Emperor, was named Prince of Jìn in 1370; in 1376 Xiè Chéng extended the walls on three sides to a circuit of twenty-four lǐ with eight gates, and in 1378 the prince came to live in Taiyuan. In 1381 he enlarged the Chóngshàn Temple in memory of his mother, Empress Mǎ, and under the Wànlì Emperor the twin thirteen-storey pagodas of the Yǒngzuò Temple rose one after the other on a hill outside the southeast gate. In 1644 Lǐ Zìchéng took the city and seized the last Prince of Jin, Zhū Qiúguì, and in 1649 the Qīng walled off a Manchu garrison quarter in its southwest corner. Fù Shān, a Yangqu man, put on Daoist dress after the fall of the Ming and in 1678 refused to sit the court's special examination.