Yangliuqing

Yangliuqing (杨柳青), which translates as Green Willows, is a market town in the north-west of Xiqing District on the north bank of the Grand Canal, and it is the seat of the district government. It grew from a settlement called Liukou on the Song-Liao border and was made Liukou Town in 1214; it took its present name in the late Yuan or early Ming. The site has more than a thousand years behind it, and it has been a commercial town of northern China for most of that time. Because it stood on the canal transport hub, the Qing period saw it laid out in sixteen streets and seventy-two lanes, and that prosperity produced three things at once: the woodblock New Year prints, the merchant courtyard houses and the Gan Da Ying trading culture that carried its goods west.