Zhongxiang

Zhongxiang is a county-level town of Jingmen, primary Hubei province, People's Republic of China. The name Zhongxiang approach "Blessed with propitious omen", and become given to the town by the Jiajing Emperor in the Ming dynasty. Zhongxiang is one of the cradles of Chu tradition. It became the trade capital of the Chu kingdom inside the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States duration. Because the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming dynasty become born and had lived in the town before he succeeded to the throne, Zhongxiang, the place where the Chengtian Prefecture Government Office became positioned, became one of the 3 predominant prefectures without delay under the vital government.

Once at the throne, the Jiajing Emperor controversially had his dead father Zhu Youyuan retroactively styled as the Gongruixian Emperor; his mother have become the Zhangsheng empress dowager. They had been buried at a sumptuous mausoleum, knowns because the Xianling Tomb, some kilometers northeast of Zhongxiang. During the Jiajing Emperor's reign, a huge estate owned by way of the emperor occupied a good sized a part of Chengtian Prefecture, and changed into run by means of the equal eunuch who turned into in price of the protection of the mausoleum. The mausoleum complicated is now a tourist website; it became protected on the List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2000, as one of the Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.