Chengdu, located in the southwest of the People's Republic of China, is the capital of Sichuan province and a sub-provincial city. The urban area population is 3.75 million and the administrative area population is 11.3 million (2007).

In the early 4th century BC, the 9th Kaiming king of the ancient Shu moved his capital to the city's current location from today's nearby Pixian. After the conquest of Shu by the State of Qin in 316 BC, a new city was founded by the Qin general Zhang Yi. This can be seen as the beginning of the Chinese Chengdu.

Historically, Chengdu has marked its name in the history of financial innovation. The world’s first ever paper currency 'Jiao Zi' was seen in Chengdu in the year 1023, during the Song Dynasty of ancient China. Chengdu is now building itself to be the financial hub for Western People's Republic of China and has successfully attracted major international financial institutions, including Citigroup, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, ABN AMRO, BNP Paribas. Chengdu is not only the gateway of Western People's Republic of China for foreign financial institutions, but also a booming town for Chinese domestic financial firms.

Chengdu has also long been established as a national base for electronic and IT industry. Intel's Chengdu factory is its second one after its Shanghai factory in China and the first such large-scale foreign investment in electronic industry in interior mainland China and in November 2006 IBM signed an agreement with the Chengdu High-Tech Zone to establish a Global Delivery Center, its fourth in China after Dalian, Shanghai and Shenzhen, within the Chengdu Tianfu Software Park.

An article by the Los Angeles Times (2006) called Chengdu "China's party city". Chengdu outnumbers Shanghai in the number of tea houses and bars despite having less than half the population. The inhabitants have a reputation both within Sichuan and in China at large for having a laid back attitude and for knowing how to enjoy life.

Source: Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License