Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu Province. A city of worldwide fame, it has a population of 1.91 million. In the east of the city stands the Zhongshan Hill and in the west lies the Stone-Walled City. The ancients compared the hill to a "curling dragon" and the stone city too a "crouching tiger", when describing the beauty and magnificence of Nanjing. Myriads of changing scenes of mountains and water are presented by the land with the Zhongshan Hill, Rain Flower Terrace, and the Qingliang and Mufu Hills around it, and crisscrossed by waters, with the Yangtze River flowing from the west and the Qinhuai River from the southeast.
  In history, Nanjing was the capital  of ten feudal dynasties in China.

  As early as in 472 B.C., Prime Minister Fan Li of the state of Yue began to build a city here. By now it is more than 2460 years that have passed. Among the states that had set up Nanjing as their capital are included the state of Wu (222--280) during the Three Kingdoms Period (220--280), the Eastern Jin (317--420), the states of Song, Qi, Liang and Chen of the Southern Dynasties (420--589), the Ming (1368--1644) and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851--1864), there were altogether more than ten names that had adopted for Najing, such as Jinling, Jianye, Jiankang, Jiangning, Baixia, Tianjin, etc. The Stone-Walled City is another named used for Nanjing.

  Backed on to the mountains and faced with rivers, Nanjing has a great number of tourist attractions, including the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, Ming tombs, Purple Hills Observatory, Rain and Flower Terrace, Qixia Hill, Xuanwu Lake, Tangshan Hot Springs, Not-to-Worry Lake, etc. Nanjinghas many well equipped hotels at the service of its tourism, such as Jinling Hotel, Nanjing Hotel, Dingshan Hotel, Shengli Hotel, Dongjiao Hotel and Shuangmenlou Hotel.

  As unique to Nanjing, many foods and dishes of local cuisine can be tasted, such as pressed salted ducks, whitebaits from the Taihu Lake, crabs from the Yangcheng Lake, herrings and hairtails from the Yangtze Rivers. Cloud brocade, pottery from Yixing and Wuxi's clay figurines available in Nanjing make ideal souvenirs for tourists. Facilitated by modern transportation means and convenient urban traffic, Nanjing has scheduled airliners, trains and steam boats to Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xi'an, Guangzhou and other cities.

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