Lushan District

Lianxi (simplified Chinese: 濂溪区; traditional Chinese: 濂溪區; pinyin: Liánxī Qū) is the name of a district in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, People's Republic of China, taking its name from Mount Lu, which is located inside its jurisdiction boundaries. The vestiges of abandoned temples there indicate a history dating back thousands of years but it is now a popular domestic and foreign tourist attraction as well as home to the mountain resort town of Kuling and the 1,474 metres (4,836 ft) high Mount Lu.

The village of Kuling on the slopes of a wide valley in Lushan District was established in 1895 by Edward Selby Little as a sanitarium and rest resort for European and American missionaries in southern China. They naturally built their houses in the colonial style of architecture, and added a church, schools, and sports facilities. It was named by E. S. Little, himself a missionary, as a pun: it is wonderfully cooling after the summer heat in the plains below. It was also a word that sounded conveniently Chinese to the local people, and has been adopted by them. Kuling was run by the missionaries in a Kuling Council that sold the plots of the land and with the proceeds paid for local services and security. In 1936, when most of the missionaries left before the Japanese invaded, Lianxi was returned to Chinese jurisdiction.

Prior to 1949, the President of China, Chiang Kai-shek chose Lianxi as the summer headquarters for his nationalist Kuomintang government, having been introduced to the place by his wife Soong Mei-ling, the daughter of a Shanghai Methodist minister. It was here that in 1946 the U.S. special diplomatic mission representing the President of the United States led by General George C. Marshall met with Chiang Kai-shek to discuss the role of post-World War II China.

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