Wansheng was assembled in 1955 out of parts of three counties: seventeen townships of Tongzi County in Guizhou, one town and six townships of Nanchuan County in Sichuan, and three townships of Qijiang County that contained the Nantong and Donglin mining areas. The coal seams crossed the provincial line, which is why the old county boundaries did not work and a single mining district was created instead, with its seat at Wansheng. Before anyone came for the scenery, the ground supplied as much as half of all the coal mined in Chongqing.
From the journal
Black Valley: from the coal country to the karst
Wansheng supplied up to half of Chongqing's coal; the valley that replaced the pitheads is part of the limestone belt behind it.
In the same city · Qijiang ↗Three counties, one coalfield
The valley today
The Black Valley is the best known natural attraction of the district, and it belongs to the karst that runs through this part of the city: across the municipality the limestone breaks the surface as stone forests, grouped peaks, caves and deep valleys wherever it surfaces. Wansheng lies in the far south, on the Chongqing–Guizhou border about 70 kilometres from the main urban area, covering 566 square kilometres with a population of 270,000. A second draw is the Wansheng stone forest, the second largest in China. In October 2011 the district was abolished and a development zone set up in its place.