Lushan District

Lushan District (zh-stp|s=庐山区|t=廬山区|p=Lúshān Qū) is the name of a district in Jiujiang, Jiangxi, China. Its history dates thousand of years in China's past. It is a popular domestic and foreign tourist attraction and hosts both the famous mountain resort town of Lushan and the Mount Lushan (spanning 500 km²).

History

The resort town of Lushan (Kuling in English) was established in the late 1800s by and for European and American travellers, and is distinguished by the colonial architecture of its buildings. Because of its mild summers, the mountain town of Lushan is often referred to as 'Natures' Air Cooler'. Many travellers spend the summer month up the mountain as a way to avoid the heat of nearby cities.

Prior to 1949, Lushan was often a training and settling spot for the Kuomintang army. The then president of China, Chiang Kai-Shek often visited Lushan as a vacation spot. Many tourist attractions commenmorate this fact. It is here during 1946 the U.S. special envoy representing the president of the United States led by General George C. Marshall met with Chiang Kai-Shek to discuss the role of post-WWII China.

After the communist take-over of China in 1949, it became famous as a favoured meeting place for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. It hosted the Eighth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee, also known as the "Lushan Conference" or "Plenum", which began on 23 July and convened on 2 August, 1959. It also hosted the Second Plenum of the Ninth Central Committee in August of 1970.

The movie "Lushan Lian", which has been shown in the Lushan theatre non-stop since 1980, was recgonised by the Guinness World Records as the longest running movie in theatres. Each ticket sold to this movie is numbered by the number of ticket sold so far. As of May 2006, this number is close to 140 million tickets.

In 2007, a biography of Grand Canyon pioneer Harvey Butchart was published, called "Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon" by Elias Butler and Tom Myers. This book contains several chapters about Mount Lushan, where Butchart spent several years as a child of missionaries. [ [http://www.eliasbutler.com/book.htm The new book-- Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon] . ]

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