Jiaozuo 焦作市

History

Known in the past as Shanyang (山阳), Huaizhou (怀州) and Huaiqing Prefecture (怀庆府), the area is commonly called Huaichuan (怀川). The early Shang walled town at Fucheng (府城) was named one of China's top ten archaeological discoveries of 1999. The city counts Sima Yi (司马懿), Han Yu (韩愈), the poet Li Shangyin (李商隐) and Zhu Zaiyu (朱载堉), deviser of twelve-tone equal temperament, among its natives, and calls it the gathering place of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove (竹林七贤). The town of Jiaozuo itself was set up in 1910, after a British firm, the Pekin Syndicate (福公司), had opened coal mines here in 1898; it became a city under the province in 1956. Huai opera (怀梆), named for the old Huaiqing Prefecture, entered the national intangible heritage list in 2006.

What to see

The Yuntai Mountain World Geopark joins three national 5A scenic areas, Yuntai Mountain (云台山), Qingtian River (青天河) and Shennong Mountain (神农山), with the Qinglong (青龙峡) and Fenglin (峰林峡) gorges. Yuntai, in Xiuwu County (修武县), is a landscape of Taihang gorges, springs and waterfalls, named for the clouds that hang between its peaks. At Qingtian River in Bo'ai (博爱), Sangu Spring (三姑泉) feeds a lake 7.5 kilometres long. Shennong Mountain in Qinyang (沁阳), where legend says the Divine Farmer tasted herbs, has thousands of lacebark pines and is home to Taihang macaques, a nationally protected species.

Chenjiagou (陈家沟) in Wen County (温县), where, by the city's account, Chen Wangting (陈王廷) created taijiquan (太极拳) in the late Ming and early Qing, keeps the ancestral hall of the art and a taijiquan museum; taijiquan entered UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2020. In Wuzhi (武陟), Jiaying Guan (嘉应观), a temple to the river gods built from 1723 on the Yongzheng Emperor's orders and modelled on Beijing's Forbidden City, has been a national key cultural relics protection unit since 2001.

Food and local products

Jiaozuo is home to the Four Huai Medicinals (四大怀药): Huai chrysanthemum, rehmannia, Chinese yam and achyranthes, grown here, the city says, for more than 3,000 years and now Chinese geographical-indication products; their growing and processing is on the national intangible heritage list. Naotang donkey meat (闹汤驴肉) has its making technique on Henan's provincial heritage list. Marbled porcelain, popular in the Northern Song, has been revived, and the Dangyangyu (当阳峪) technique was listed nationally in 2014.