Two Seats on One Canal

Wuqing has had several names and its administrative history reaches back to the Western Han. It was known as Quanzhou, as Yongnu and as Yongyang, and the sources record the change that produced the present name: in the first year of Tianbao under the Tang, the old county name was abolished and the place was called Wuqing, taking the sense that military merit had pacified the region. In the seventh year of Taiping Zhenjun under the Northern Wei, Quanzhou had been merged into Yongnu. A name that means pacification by force is a useful reminder that this flat country was a corridor between capitals, and corridors are fought over.

The county town itself moved. Wuqing inherited the seat of Yongnu County and was first at Jiuxian village in Sicun town; the sources record that it moved to the present Chengguan town in the early Ming. Meanwhile a second settlement was growing for a different reason. Yangcun, in the south-east of the district, was built along the North Canal and served as an ancient grain wharf. A county seat is where the magistrate sits; a wharf is where the money moves, and in a canal economy the second can overtake the first. Yangcun is now the seat of the district government.

Wuqing is the Tianjin district closest to Beijing, and the sources give it a promotional name that makes the position explicit: the pearl between Beijing and Tianjin. It borders Langfang of Hebei to the west and north and Tongzhou District of Beijing to the north-west, and it is on the main line between the two municipalities, with a station on the Beijing-Tianjin intercity railway and Yangcun station on the Beijing-Shanghai railway. The district holds a national-level economic and technological development zone, raised to that status at the beginning of 2011 with Xiqing. A county that once depended on grain boats now depends on trains.