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About Nanning

Nanning, the capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is located in Southern Guangxi in the sub-tropical region between 107°19′ - 109°38′ East Longitude 22°12′ - 24°2′ North Latitude With an area of 22, 293 square kilometers, it is situated in the middle of Nanning Basin through which Yongjiang River runs. 

Nanning enjoys a favorable geographical location in Southwestern China, connecting the Indo-China Peninsula to the west Guangdong Province, Hong Kong, Macao Hainan Province to the east, making it not only an important economic center along the Beibu Gulf, but also a rapid growing gateway city to Southeast Asia in the southern southwestern parts of China.   

 As an important gateway to Southeast Asia for Southwestern China, Nanning is a hub, a regional center an opening city that plays an active role in the communication between China ASEAN countries. It is becoming a new booming economic zone a hotspot for foreign investment in China. With its rapid urban development, Nanning attaches great important to improving natural environment it enjoys the reputation of “the Green City of China” because of its best green coverage in the country. 

Nanning is a city with a long history. As early as the Neolithic Age, early inhabitants engaged in primitive fishing, hunting farming. It was once the territory of the Baiyue people came into its existence as a county named Jinxing in 318 A.D. became the capital of Jinxing Prefecture separated from Yulin Prefecture of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. It was the first time for Nanning to be the seat of a county a prefecture, which marked the beginning of the founding of its administrative division. Nanning was named as‘Yongzhou’ in. the Tang Dynasty in 634 A.D. In the Yuan Dynasty in 1324 A.D, it was renamed as Nanning Lu (an administrative division) from Yongzhou Lu meaning “May peace maintain in the southern frontier”, hence the name “Nanning”. In its history, Nanning was famous for business trade, which had had permanent business offices from other areas in China since the Song Dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty Nanning developed into the commodity distributing center of the Zuojiang River & the Youjiang River with the reputation of “Little Nanjing”. In 1907, it became a port for foreign trade. 
Nanning became the capital of Guangxi Autonomous Region in1958.


Nanning, known as Yongzhou in ancient time, is a frontier city with a long history profound cultural accumulation. It is populated by predominating Zhuang minority other 35 nationalities, such as the Han, Miao, Yao nationalities, etc. with a total population of 6.6616 million. People from different ethnic groups get along with each other in peace harmony in the city, having colorful national features styles as well as ethnic festivals diverse activities, such as throwing embroidered ball, dragon boat race, board-shoe dance, snatching the firework, stepping on a windmill, etc. Nanning is a city of songs, people from home abroad getting together to enjoy singing dancing on the annual Nanning International Folk Song & Art Festival, a grfolk art exchange event.
Nanning is known as the hometown of red bean (jequirity bean). It is no uncommon to see red bean dropping like rain people picking them up in the urban roads or courtyards, reminding people of the famous poem written by Wang Wei, the outstanding poet of Tang Dynasty: In the south the red berry tree grows, How many twigs sprout as Spring flows? I wish you pick as many as you could, Most express my yearning they would.

Nanning is also known as Green City, Phoenix City, or Wuxiang City (Five-elephant city). Rich in tourism resources, it connects Guilin city to the north Beihai city to the south, making up a golden tourism belt in Guangxi. It attracts numerous visitors with magnificent frontier scenery, romantic beach style, charming exotic atmosphere, scattered beautiful mountains rivers, remote historic sites, etc.
In Nanning, Nanning-style Cantonese (one of the Cantonese dialects) is in common use among urban people, Pinghua (one of Chinese dialects) partly in use in suburbs Zhuang language (divided into Yongnan dialect in the south area Yongbei dialect in the north area) in use among Zhuang people. The most prevalent language used in the whole city of Nanning is Nanning-style Cantonese mandarin mixed with some elements of Cantonese. In general, people of all nationalities (all ethnic groups) can speak Mandarin.
Nanning has 115 Culture Art Museums (Stations), 9 professional arts groups which give 252 performances yearly, with about 100,000 person-times of audiences. In Hengxian County, non material cultural heritage bases have been established in four schools to protect inherit excellent traditional culture, such as Guangdong opera Yong opera.