Mongol troops took the city then called Baozhou in 1213, burned and slaughtered for three days and left it a ruin, until the general Zhang Rou, a former Jin commander who had joined the Mongols, rebuilt it in 1227.
一二一三年,蒙古军攻陷当时名为保州的这座城市,焚烧屠戮长达三天,将其变成一片废墟;直到一二二七年,曾为金将、后归降蒙古的将领张柔,才重建了这座城池。
After rebuilding it, Zhang Rou laid out its markets and residential quarters and channelled water into the town from a spring-fed river. In 1239 the Mongol authorities made Baozhou the seat of Shuntian Circuit, and in 1275 the Yuan court renamed the circuit Baoding Circuit, giving the city the name it still carries; it is conventionally interpreted as referring to protecting the capital and securing the realm.
重建城池之后,张柔划定市井与居民区,并引一条泉水河入城;一二三九年,蒙古当局将保州定为顺天路治所,一二七五年,元廷将顺天路改名为保定路,这座城市从此沿用这一名称,通常被解释为保卫都城、安定天下之意。
Where Qing Viceroys Governed and Generals Were Trained
清代总督坐镇、将军由此走出
From 1669, when the governor of Zhili province moved there from Zhengding, Baoding was the seat of the province that surrounded Beijing. According to Visit Beijing, the governor-general’s office there, created in 1724 and settled in its present compound in 1730, is the only Qing provincial yamen in China to survive substantially intact. It housed 74 governors-general across 99 terms, among them Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Yuan Shikai, and Hebei’s provincial government occupied the compound from 1949; the province’s capital moved to Shijiazhuang only in 1968, after an interlude in Tianjin.
自一六六九年直隶巡抚由正定移驻保定起,这里便成为环绕北京的直隶省的省会。据北京旅游网介绍,保定的直隶总督署设于一七二四年,一七三零年迁入现址,是中国目前唯一保存较为完整的清代省级衙署。总督署先后有七十四人九十九任总督在此任职,其中包括曾国藩、李鸿章与袁世凯;一九四九年起,河北省人民政府也曾在此办公,直到一九六八年,河北省会才迁往石家庄,此前还曾有一段迁驻天津的时期。
Military schools at Baoding had been training modern officers since 1902, and the institution formally known as the Baoding Army Officers’ Academy operated from 1912 until 1923, graduating nine classes. Across the wider succession of military schools based there, more than 11,000 officers were trained; estimates of how many later became generals range from more than 1,500 to the more than 1,800 claimed by its memorial museum. Academy alumni include Bai Chongxi, Chen Cheng, Ye Ting and Fu Zuoyi, and when Whampoa Academy opened in 1924, less than a year after Baoding closed, former Baoding cadets were among its instructors.
保定的军事学堂自一九零二年起便开始培养近代军官,而正式定名为”陆军军官学校”的保定军校,则自一九一二年开办,至一九二三年停办,共办九期。若将此地先后设立的各军事学堂合计,共培养军官一万一千多人;关于其中日后成为将军者的数量,各种估算从一千五百多人到该校纪念馆所称的一千八百多人不等。校友中有白崇禧、陈诚、叶挺、傅作义等人;一九二四年黄埔军校创办时,距保定军校停办尚不足一年,一批保定军校毕业生便前往黄埔任教。
Warring States Ruins and a Peach Garden Oath
战国遗址与桃园结义
In Yi County, in Baoding’s northwest, lie the ruins of Xiadu, the lower capital of the Warring States kingdom of Yan, which became a capital around 311 BC under King Zhao. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ archaeology portal, its walled city runs about 8 kilometres from east to west and 4 to 6 from north to south, making it the largest Warring States capital identified so far. Tradition holds that King Zhao built the Gold Terrace there to recruit talent, and that Prince Dan planned the assassination attempt on the king of Qin there.
保定西北部的易县,留存着战国时期燕国下都——燕下都的遗址,约自公元前三一一年燕昭王时起成为都城。据中国社会科学院考古网介绍,其城址东西长约八公里,南北宽约四至六公里,是目前已知战国都城中规模最大的一座。相传燕昭王曾在此筑黄金台招纳贤才,燕太子丹遣荆轲刺秦王的谋划,也发生在这里。
Zhuozhou, at Baoding’s northern tip beside Beijing, is where the Peach Garden oath of Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei is said to have been sworn. Its Sanyi Palace, first built in the Sui dynasty and rebuilt in 897, was largely demolished during the Cultural Revolution, leaving only its gate and a Ming stele, and was rebuilt from 1995; in July 2023, after flood-storage zones lying partly inside the town were opened, local authorities counted 133,913 people affected.
涿州位于保定最北端,与北京接壤,相传刘备、关羽、张飞桃园结义便发生于此。当地的三义宫始建于隋代,于八九七年重建,”文化大革命”期间大部分建筑被拆毁,仅余山门与一通明代石碑,自一九九五年起得以重建;二零二三年七月,涿州境内部分区域所在的蓄滞洪区相继启用,当地政府统计受灾人数达十三万三千九百一十三人。
A New City and a Changing Economy
一座新城与不断变化的经济
In April 2017, a joint notice from the Party Central Committee and the State Council created the Xiong’an New Area from Baoding’s Xiong, Rongcheng and Anxin counties, whose areas total about 1,576 square kilometres, plus a few surrounding townships. The notice called it “a plan for a thousand years, a matter of national importance”, and its purpose is to host functions relocated from Beijing; the planned area covers 1,770 square kilometres, and it had 1,205,440 permanent residents at the 2020 census.
二零一七年四月,中共中央、国务院印发通知,以保定的雄县、容城、安新三县(面积合计约一千五百七十六平方公里)及周边部分乡镇为基础,设立雄安新区。通知称其为”千年大计、国家大事”,目的是承接北京疏解的非首都功能;规划面积一千七百七十平方公里,二零二零年人口普查时,新区常住人口为一百二十万零五千四百四十人。
The business that became Great Wall Motor was making vehicles in Baoding’s Nandayuan township by 1984, under collective ownership. According to accounts of its history, it had about 60 employees and debts of ¥2 million when Wei Jianjun, then 26, took over as manager on 1 July 1990, and it turned to pickups after he saw how many were on the streets of Thailand. According to the company’s own history page, it sold 1,323,672 vehicles in 2025, 506,066 of them overseas.
后来发展为长城汽车的这家企业,至迟在一九八四年便已在保定南大园乡以集体所有制形式从事汽车制造。据相关企业史记述,一九九零年七月一日魏建军接任总经理时年仅二十六岁,工厂约有六十名员工,负债二百万元;他在看到泰国街头皮卡随处可见之后,转向皮卡生产。据公司自身的发展历程页面显示,二零二五年长城汽车共售出新车一百三十二万三千六百七十二辆,其中海外销售五十万零六千零六十六辆。
Yingli Green Energy, founded in Baoding in 1998, became the world’s largest solar module supplier by shipments in 2012 and was the first Chinese company to sponsor a FIFA World Cup, in 2010. According to its own filing with US regulators, its subsidiary Tianwei Yingli failed to repay ¥357 million of notes in October 2015 and ¥1.4 billion in May 2016, and the New York Stock Exchange delisted its shares in 2018.
英利绿色能源一九九八年创立于保定,二零一二年成为全球光伏组件出货量最大的供应商,并于二零一零年成为首家赞助国际足联世界杯的中国企业。据其向美国监管机构提交的文件披露,其子公司天威英利于二零一五年十月未能偿还三点五七亿元票据,又于二零一六年五月未能偿还十四亿元票据,纽约证券交易所于二零一八年将其摘牌。
According to Baoding’s 2024 statistical communiqué, GDP reached ¥433.94 billion, up 6.0 percent, excluding Dingzhou, a county-level city under direct provincial administration, or ¥477.33 billion including it. Per capita output came to ¥47,830, and the permanent population stood at 9.0462 million, with 50,700 births against 76,100 deaths.
据保定市二零二四年统计公报显示,全市(不含定州)GDP为四千三百三十九点四亿元,同比增长百分之六点零,含定州则为四千七百七十三点三亿元;定州为省直管县级市。人均产值四万七千八百三十元,常住人口九百零四点六二万人,全年出生人口五点零七万人,死亡人口七点六一万人。
Getting to Baoding means a high-speed train from Beijing West that takes around 40 minutes. Baoding has no scheduled passenger airport of its own, and its East station is 27 minutes by high-speed train from Shijiazhuang Zhengding airport station.
前往保定,可从北京西站乘坐高铁,约四十分钟即可抵达;保定本身没有定期客运机场,从保定东站乘高铁前往石家庄正定机场站,仅需二十七分钟。
In Baoding’s old quarter, Shuaifu Hutong, or Marshal’s Mansion Lane, is still named for the headquarters of Zhang Rou, the general who rebuilt the city in 1227, fourteen years after the Mongols burned it down, according to The Paper.
据澎湃新闻报道,在保定老城区,”帅府胡同”之名,至今仍源自张柔当年设于此处的帅府;这位将领在蒙古军焚毁这座城市十四年之后,于一二二七年将其重建。
