Qianjiang
Named for the old saying that streams leaving the Han River are called qian, this former Yunmeng marshland keeps the rammed-earth terraces of a Chu royal palace at Longwan.
A place shaped through time
Qianjiang occupies the flat heart of the Jianghan Plain with the Han River to its north, its ground rising only twenty or thirty metres above sea level and once forming a corner of the ancient Yunmeng marshes. A county was founded here in 965 and named Qianjiang after the saying that a stream leaving the Han is called qian, because local channels carried Han water to the Yangtze. The Longwan site preserves one of the earliest and most complete groups of Chu detached palaces, regarded as a royal residence of the Eastern Zhou. Laced with waterways and gardens, the area is known as a land of water and gardens and is the ancestral home of the playwright Cao Yu. Its very name records how shifting channels built this plain.