Guild halls and one gate: the fabric of Anju
Anju's county history ended in 1662 and its offices closed in 1903; what remains is a street of halls built by merchants from elsewhere.
Tongliang District covers 1,340.47 square kilometres, and hill country makes up 84 per cent of its surface. Six tributaries of the Jialing River cross it, the Fu River among them for 36 kilometres. Its name was recorded before 221 BCE and has stayed with the place ever since. A county from 703, it became a district on 2 May 2014. The district is known above all for its dragon dance, which the State Council designated an intangible cultural heritage on 20 May 2006, and for Anju, its oldest town, which began as Chishui County in 588 and is now a 4A tourist attraction. The Tongliang Culture site, unearthed at the Xiguo Reservoir in 1976, shows human settlement here from about 20,000 years before its discovery.
Anju's county history ended in 1662 and its offices closed in 1903; what remains is a street of halls built by merchants from elsewhere.