For the town in the Guangdong province of China, see Chang'an Town
Chang'an (Simplified Chinese: 长安; Traditional Chinese: 長安; pinyin: Cháng'ān; Wade_Giles: Ch'ang_an) is the ancient capital of more than 10 dynasties in China. "Chang'an" means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese. The site of Chang'an of the Han Dynasty was located in northwest of present-day Xi'an, [[Shaanxi. Another site, Chang'an of Tang Dynasty, includes the area inside the walls of Xi'an, small parts of eastern, western and major part of southern suburbs of nowaday Xi'an city. It is as big as 8 times of the Xi'an city in the Ming Dynasty, which was reconstructed on the basis of the imperial city of Sui and Tang Dynasty. Chang'an was one of the largest and the most populous cities in the world.
The city site was located 5 km away from Xi'an in the northwest. As the capital of the Western Han Dynasty, it was the centre of China's politics, economy and culture, the start of the Silk Road and an international metropolis which was comparable with the city of Rome at that time.
The construction of the city can be divided into 3 periods over more than 90 years. The Emperor Gao of Han Liu Bang decided to build the palaces before the city walls. In 202 BC, he repaired the Xingle Palace (兴乐宫) of the Qin Dynasty and renamed it toChangle Palace (长乐宫). Two years later, a new palace called Weiyang (未央宫) was constructed. In 195 BC, his son, Emperor Hui of Han begun the construction of the walls of Chang'an and finished them in September of 191 BC. Emperor Hui, Emperor Wu of Han then built several palaces in the city. At that time, Zhang Qian went to the west as a diplomat of the Empire of Han. Chang'an city became a bridge between Asia and Europe as the eastern start of the famous Silk Road. In 2 AD, more than 240,000 people lived in Chang'an. After the Western Han, the Eastern Han government made Luoyang the capital and renamed Chang'anto Xijing (western capital) (China had, for cosmological reasons, always four "capitals"). After the Eastern Han, many dynasties regarded Chang'an city as the capital. In 582, emperor of the Sui Dyansty selected a place in the southeast of it to build a new capital which he called Daxing city (renamed as Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty). The Chang'an city of Han was abandoned.
External links
Introduction of Xi'an/Chang'an (http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/cities/china/xian/xian.html) by the University of Washington
Chang is one of the most wanted men in Taiwan, sought by the island's criminal investigation division for the past four years for alleged involvement in organized crime as a leader of the Bamboo Union gang, a mafia-like organization that claims 15,000 members.
Chang said he got into trouble over a government plan to offer amnesty to members of organized crime in exchange for confessions and a promise not to engage in further illegal activities.
Chang said he refused specifically to agree to a Taiwanese government ban on contacting his friends in organized crime, including Chen Chi-li, who was convicted in Taiwan in 1985 of involvement in Henry Liu's murder.
Chang’s deft and sympathetic translator, Andrew Jones, an accomplished academic who has also translated the fiction of Yu Hua, has given Changan English that suggests her own fluency and comfort in the language.
The context of Chang’s writing in English suggests the nature of her danger for a Communist reading public: her essays describe her upper-class background, and are forthright about fleeing war-ravished China in favor of English-style university education in Hong Kong, but Jones’s footnotes reveal an even more sinister truth.
Chang’s resilience against social pressure from the rest of the Chinese intellectual community displays an impressive strength, and despite writing from an occupied zone for collaborationist magazines, she would have called herself a-political.
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