安宁 (An Ning)

The Garden City

When Shui the engineer was first banished with his peoples from their lands up north, it was said he followed the Hu river up to its source, and found lake Guan Liao. And there, where stakes would cast no shadow by mid-day, He founded a city for his people. A city he named An Ning, Tranquility, for what he hoped it could bring to his people.
It was hard to predict, from that one event almost 800 years ago, that the city he founded would become one day the capital of the vast Jin empire, or that it could sustain well over one million people.
The city of An Ning is an almost self-sustaining city, due to the productive floating islands built on the lake. And extra food needed to feed the huge population can be easily brought up by food shipments down the Hu river or up from the Qing river.
Its central position, connecting all three great rivers of the Jin empire, made the city a major center of trade. Every year, tens of thousands of merchants gather in the An Ning fairs to trade and bargain for goods from across the empire. The city itself supplies the market with rich silk, cloth, and porcelain, along with fine jewels. If something cannot be found from a boat trip throughout the stalls of An Ning, then odds are that that something cannot be found anywhere.

Demographics

While the city's population is mostly of the Jin majority, dozens of various minorities from across the empire all have a more or less recognized presence in the city. To maintain civil stability, the right of all the minorities in the city is guaranteed by the Emperors Law. despite this, most of the minorities are crammed into the mouth of the Qing river and Red river, while more opened lands are owned by the richer Jin majority.
Due to its impressive merchant population, the city has perhaps the largest foreign merchant population of any cities in the Empire, only rivaled by the great coastal cities of the north. They too have guaranteed right, and their increased wealth means that they live closer to the center of the lake, where the markets and fairground of the An Ning are found.

Government

The city is under direct administration from the Jin emperors, who appoints a city Prefect to manage the day to day business. Said Prefect also serves as the final appeal for judgments on violations of the law, unless the said violator wishes to go before the Emperor himself to plead his case.
The laws are enforced by the city guard, attached to 27 local courts and are responsible for the capture of troublemakers and the patrolling of the whole city, except on the grounds of the imperial palace. Any crime committed inside one of the Twin palaces is instead under the jurisdiction of the imperial guard, also known as the Forbidden Guard. These two organization serves as the only two armed force permanently inside of the city of An Ning.
The city itself has been lavishly decorated and furnished by the imperial treasury over centuries, and its trade is exempt from many of the taxes that would be present elsewhere. However, the peoples of the city still have to pay the head tax, levied on everyone every year, and they must pay sales taxes on the iron, salt, and other states monopolies. Despite being less taxed in general, the city still contributes a large amount of money to the imperial treasuries, due to the size of its population and the wealth present in it.

Defences

Other than the city guard and the Forbidden Guard, who combined numbers at a little over 8 000 men, the city is mainly defended by the Jin river fleets, stationed close by. The city has otherwise no great fortification, as it is situated in quite a safe location deep inside of the empire. In its 800 years of history, the city had only been attacked once, and the invading forces of Zhao found the lake city impossible to effectively besiege, once the wooden bridges connecting the floating islands to the mainland had been severed.

History

The founding of the city of An Ning is shrouded in myths and distortions. According to the locals, and the official history of the Jin Empire, the city was founded by Shui the engineer, who was forced out of his lands by powerful neighboring states sometime during the early Spring and Autumn period.
Shui Ping was the Marquis of Jin, the ruler of a small realm of the edge of the Xin empire and of the Hu river civilization. At around year 175 of the Xin era, the Marquisard of Jin was conquered by neighboring states. Shui Ping, who presumably had been a benevolent ruler, fled his lands with about 2000 loyal soldiers, peasants, nobles and artisans. This small caravan of people then followed the Hu river south, in search of suitable land to settle on. The trek south was arduous and filled with danger, as the land surrounding the Hu river becomes very hilly at this point and the Hu river itself becomes more of a rapid, preventing any sailing to cut down on travel time. Worse, the hills were populated by scattered hostile tribes, who would raid and kill many of Shui's followers
In order to give hope to his despairing caravan, Shui consulted his accompanying stargazer, who foretold him that he will reach the source of the Hu river, where he will find the center of the world. And on that source, he will found a city that will give his people peace. Armed with this vision, Shui reinvigorated his followers, who for the most part chose to travel with him in search for this promised source.
For over three weeks, Shui and his people trekked through hostile land and hilly terrain, losing more and more at each day to desertion, attacks, thirst, and hunger. By the time Shui reached the end of the Hu River and stood on the north coast of the lake known to us now as lake Guan Liao, The starting caravan of 2000 had dwindled down to about 800.
Then the records get spotty. It is said that Shui left his caravan for two days, alone, and swam further in the lake. There, he found the twin islands of Xiao Ju and Xian Yi and landed on Xian Yi. He then planted a stake into the ground, for reasons unknown, and saw that the stake casts no shadow, as the sun was directly above him. He took this as a sign of the stargazer's vision, who said that he would found a city at the center of the world, and decided to found the city of An Ning, or Tranquility, at the island of Xian Yi.
The true reason for the founding was very likely more pragmatic. As Shui's small following was still heavily threatened by hill tribes, He most likely sought to settle in the middle of the lake in an attempt to avoid hill tribe raids.
While settling in the middle of a lake avoided raids, it also brought many new challenges. Most essentially, the question of how Shui's people could feed itself with so little farmable land. Even if the twin islands were covered by farmland, it would still not be enough to feed even his small expedition. And the twin islands were too forested to immediately be farmed, meaning that Shui did not have a steady source of food aside from fishing and gathering.
To solve the food crisis, Shui came up with a plan of dredging the lake floor and stacking the fertile mud near the shallow water around the twin island. This created immediately farmable land and its fertility proved to be incredibly high. Once the immediate food crises solved, Shui worked with artisans to design and perfect a set of techniques to create new islands of lake mud rapidly and effectively, which rapidly increased the quantity of farmable land. For these accomplishments, Shui was posthumously given the title of Shui the Engineer.
Now, with more farmable land available and his city secured, Shui sent out dozens of small expeditions every year back to the Hu River and his previous realm, to encourage families to make the move to his new lands, where they would get a floating island to farm for free. The small size of these expeditions allowed them to evade the hill tribes, and slowly grew the settlement over time. By the time Shui the engineer passed away, at around the year 200 of Xin era, An Ning was already a city of almost 10,000 people.
Over the next three hundred years, the city would continue to grow and expand. This expansion was helped in large part by its distance from the conflicts plaguing the Hu civilization in general. The city gained a reputation for peace and serenity, and this reputation attracted immigrant and refugees from all over the small principalities along the Hu river. Before long, the city expanded past its bounds and new cities were founded by the mouth of the Qing and Red Rivers and expanding into the lands surrounding these rivers. The wealth and power of the House of Shui grew by such, that by the year 452, the then leader of the city and Shui's descendent, Shui Zhen, was ennobled by the Xin Emperor, and given the title of the Duke of Jin, based on the noble title held by his ancestors. The title represented recognition by the rest of the Hu river civilization and the beginning of Jin ascension.
As Jin grew, the city of An Ning grew with it. Artisans fleeing the chaos of war came to the safe haven, bringing with them valuable technical expertise. It was during this time that the ceramic, pottery, silk, textile, and various other industries grew in and around the city of An Ning. Despite having come under siege once by the Duke of Zhao and a coalition of smaller principalities in the year 625 of the Xin era, An Ning stood strong and remained the preeminent city among the warring states.
The city reached its zenith after the Jin unification war. As for the first time, the Hu river basin was united with the new colonies in the Qin river basin by the same political power. However, direct sailing between the two rivers was impossible, as the Hu river was a rapid after lake Guan Liao. To ease communication and transport between the parts of the empire, the Grand Canal was started in the year 7 of the Jin era and finished in the year 32 of the Jin era, circumventing the Hu rapids. This unprecedented level of interconnection between the parts of the empire, combined with the rise of the SilverHouses financial institution and the general peace across the empire, turned the city into the largest center of trade in the empire, and quite possibly the largest city in the world.

Geography

The city of An Ning is more fairly described as an assortment of towns around lake Guan Liao. The southern peoples have built great floatings islands for farming from dredging up fertile mud from the bottom of the lake. the imperial administration is centered around the twin palace of Forbidden Purple and Forbidden Red, situated on the two natural islands in the center of the lake, named Xiao Jun and Xian Yi. The lake is fed by the red river to the south-east, and the Qing river to the north-east, while water flows out through the Hu river in the north.
The lands surrounding lake Guan Liao is very hilly, as is the rest of the south that is situated in the region named the Jin shield. The hills complicate farming, but terraces farming has allowed the Jin people to still make sufficient amounts of food.

Natural Resources

The city produces a lot of fresh produces, including grain, soybeans, and the newly introduced rice, all of which form the basis of the local diet. The city is also situated south enough to not have to experience colder winter of the north, and which allows for double cropping in a year, greatly increasing its productivity.

Alternative Name(s)

Nan Jung

Type

Capital

Population

1,524,940

Related Ethnicities

• The Jin People

Inhabitant Demonym

Nan Jungnian

Location under

Lake Liao Guan

Owner/Ruler

文读 (Wen Du)

Owning Organization

The Jin Empire

Related Tradition (Primary)

• The Morning Star Festival

Characters in Location

• 文读 (Wen Du)

Related Historical Events

• 623 of the Xin era
  The first anti-Jin Coalition
• 176 of the Xin era
  The founding of An Ning