History of Beijing

People have lived in the Beijing area for thousands of years. Several towns were built on the site and later destroyed.

Beijing is first mentioned in history in the chronicles of the Zhou Dynasty’s conquest of the Shang Dynasty in the 11th century BC. A walled Chinese village called the ji was built in the southeast suburbs of contemporary Beijing.

For several centuries before the unification of China in 221 BC, Beijing was the capital of the State of Yan.

In the 1272 the Mongol leader Kublai Khan built the city of Dadu on the site.

He made Dadu the capital of China. Kublai Khan rebuilt the city, founding the modern city and made it capital of his domains.  After he completed the conquest of south China, Beijing became, for the first time in history, the capital of the whole of China.

The city was renamed Beijing in the early 1400s.  It was chosen as the capital of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) in 1421, which it remained during the Qing dynasty (1644 – 1911/12).

The city suffered heavy damage when it was occupied by European forces in 1860 and 1900. It was known as Peking in the United States and other Western countries until the early 1980s.
History of Beijing

Gungnae City

In 82 BC, the Goguryeo people drive out the armies of the Han commanderies of Lintun and Zhenfan.

According to the History of the Three Kingdoms, It was in present-day Huanren County in Liaoning Province where King Dongmyeing of Goguryeo first set up capital in 37 BC. In 3rd AD, the capital was moved to Gungnae city.

Gungnae City is located in the urban section of Ji' an City, Jilin Province. It was the political, economic and cultural center for the early and middle periods of ancient Kogury regime in Northeast China.

The 19th ruler of Gungnae City was Gwanggaeto of Goguryeo. Goguryeo’s primary task was to secure an independent territory by eliminating the remaining commanders in southern Manchuria and the north-central region of the Korean Peninsula.
Gungnae City