Tongcheng

Tongcheng, Wade-Giles romanization T’ung-ch’eng, city, southwestern Anhui sheng (province), eastern China. It stands on the edge of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) floodplain, the area to the south being a maze of lakes, the largest of which is Lake Caizi.

It was founded as a county under the Sui dynasty (581–618 ce) and received the name Tongcheng (757) during the Tang dynasty (618–907). From the beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), it was administratively and commercially dependent upon Anqing to the south. Many immigrants went there from southern Anhui and Zhejiang provinces in the 14th and 15th centuries, when large-scale drainage and reclamation of the marshy southern part of the county were undertaken both by the local authorities and by individual families.

The area became noteworthy from the 15th century onward, when a group of wealthy local clans became not only both rich and prosperous but also remarkable for their scholarship. By the mid-16th century the area was already famed as the most important centre of scholarship north of the Yangtze. It was seriously devastated by a series of local uprisings between 1634 and 1644 at the end of the Ming period, which continued for a few years thereafter. The preeminence of the local scholars was again reestablished, however, and the local Yao and Zhang clans produced a great number of high-ranking officials throughout the 18th century. Not only was Tongcheng thus a centre of a strong political faction, but it also became the focus of the Tongcheng school, one of the chief literary schools that flourished during the Qing period (1644–1911/12). The school advocated the philosophy of the Neo-Confucians, who had flourished in Song times (960–1279), combining it with emphasis upon rigorous textual scholarship and the use of simple and unadorned prose. The Tongcheng school was of national importance in the late 19th century, one of its advocates being the great general and modernizer Zeng Guofan. Several of the earliest translators and experts in Western affairs belonged to the school.

There has been some industrial development in Tongcheng, including the manufacture of automobile and farm-machine parts, plastics, building materials, and packaging. The Hefei-Jiujiang rail line and the expressway from Shanghai to Chengdu pass through the city area. Pop. (2002 est.) 104,584.