Hongjiang has a long history, and there were activities of ancestors 3000 years ago. It has been a post station and commercial port since ancient times, and developed into a huge town with thousands of fireworks in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It is famous for its distribution of tung oil, wood, white wax and opium. It is the economic, cultural and religious center of southwest Hunan, and is known as the Pearl of Xiangxi, Little Chongqing, Little Nanjing and Southwest Metropolis. At present, hongjiang city has preserved a complete ancient shopping mall during the Ming and Qing Dynasties and the Republic of China, just like the Riverside Map of Ming and Qing Dynasties, which shows the social market of Ming and Qing Dynasties intuitively. It is a specimen of modern commercial development in China and one of the best preserved and richest ancient cities in China. It is praised by experts as "the living fossil of budding capitalism in inland areas of China", which is of great historical and cultural protection and tourism development value. The legends of Shennong's "China is the city" and Zhuan Xu's "Zhu Rong is the city" recorded in documents mean that there was a commodity exchange market at the end of primitive society in China. China Cultural Relics Atlas, Hunan Volume and Hunan Neolithic Sites holds that "Shui Yuan and Xijiang River have always been important channels to cleanse the ancient cultures of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River, but they have long been ignored by researchers". In other words, Shui Yuan was the main communication channel between the Yangtze River and the Pearl River as early as the Neolithic Age: Mr. He Lin, a folklorist in China, believed that the earliest Silk Road in China was the Water Silk Road, which began in Shang Dynasty 3,000 years ago. Its route is that Sichuan's materials pass through the Yangtze River to Youshui, through Youyang and Xiushan to Shui Yuan in Yuanling (the county seat of ancient Guizhou), then through Ping Huang in western Hunan (the former site of ancient Galand State) to the source of Qingshui River, then to Yunnan, Myanmar or Vietnam for business trips, and finally to the Western Regions by land or Indian Ocean (looking for the lost Chinese civilization: the Maritime Silk Road set sail from ancient Guizhou). Hongjiang, as an important transit point of the Maritime Silk Road, also has the opportunity to breed and produce shopping malls. A Yuan Dynasty carved cultural relic unearthed from Hongjiang can be seen that the river was covered with merchant ships of all sizes, with doors and windows, eaves, curtains and masts. On the river bank is the connecting corridor between the pier and the wind and rain bridge. There are spectacular ancient city walls with gates, temples and halls with carved beams and painted buildings, and rows of houses and bustling crowds in the market. This shows that in the Yuan Dynasty, Hongjiang Ancient Mall has become a big market at the junction of Hunan and Guizhou.

In the fifth year of Dali (770), Wuzhou (Hongjiang) was changed to Xuzhou, which governed Longbiao County (Hongjiang in Tang Dynasty, southeast of Zhijiang in Hunan Province) and led Longbiao (Hongjiang), langxi (Huitong) and Tan Yang (Zhijiang) counties. Belongs to Guizhou Middle Road. At the beginning of the Five Dynasties, it belonged to the Chu State, and later to the post-Zhou Lang Governor's Office. Song Xining was abolished in the seventh year (1074). Geographically, although Hongjiang is a tiny place, it gathers Yuanshui, Fujiang and Feishui, and directly joins the Yangtze River in Dongting. These tributaries flowed into Yuanjiang one after another. At this point, the river has widened and the water potential is huge, just like a torrent, so it is called "Hongjiang". The unique water transport conditions make Hongjiang an important post station and prosperous commercial port in southwest Hunan since ancient times.

Hongjiang and Hongjiang Miao in history, also known as Xiongximiao and Xiongximan, are lineal tribes suspected of gonggong. The Han nationality lived by the water in the Miao Gonggong tribe, so it was named Hongjiang, and the place name came from the surname.

Hongjiang Miao people make a living from Wushui, which is distributed in Wushui River Basin. The places where the ethnic composition of the Miao nationality in Hongjiang is relatively complete are Xuefeng Mountain, Huitong, Dongkou, Suining and Chengbu in the east of Qianyang. Suining and Chengbu are Miao autonomous counties, and Chengbu, the source of Wushui, is the second Miao autonomous county in China and one of the five existing Miao autonomous counties in China. The main body of Miao ancestors was the "Wu Lingren" along the Yuanjiang River in the Han Dynasty, and the north and south were also called "Wuxi people". The county was called Xiong Xi in ancient times, ranking first among the five streams, so it was also called "Xiongqian people". In the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, Miao people in China took advantage of the chaos in the Central Plains to fly to the mountain for self-defense, so they were called "flying mountain people" in history. In the Yuan Dynasty, Miao became the main ethnic group in the county. After that, external adaptation and internal migration continued, and the pattern of "ten households, three families, ten seedlings and seven people" was formed in the Wushui River Basin in the Qing Dynasty. Hongjiang is the window of Hongjiang Temple's external communication. Everyone knows Hongjiang Temple and Xiongximan, but they don't know that they are widely distributed in Wushui area.

Xiong Xi is another name of Hongjiang District, which comes from Miao language. In the Notes on Water Classics, dancing water is called Xiong Xi, and there are also titles of Xiong Xi and Hongxi in history books. During Jiajing and Qin Long in the Ming Dynasty, when capitalism was in its infancy, the commodity economy in China's coastal areas had begun to take shape, and the traditional identity of "four people" changed from "scholar-worker-farmer" to "scholar-merchant-farmer-worker". Commerce, the last neglected industry in the past, has been recognized by Hongjiang people who have emigrated; As early as 1573 ~ 1620 in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, the Litouzui of Hongjiang (now Yuanjiang Road) had formed a certain scale of material trading and distribution market, with many shops and workshops, becoming the earliest port of Hongjiang. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it became an important commercial center in southwest Hunan, guarding the material circulation channels of Hunan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Hubei, and was called the "thoroughfare of five provinces". After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, merchants gathered in Hongjiang, shops were like forests, and Qian Fan on both sides of the Yuan and Wu Dynasties competed for supremacy. In the 26th year of Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty (1687), Wang Jiong, a scholar, recorded in the Diary of a Journey to Yunnan that "there are thousands of fireworks, which is called a huge town" and described Hongjiang as "a gathering of merchants, goods and sails". In the early years of Qianlong, the story of Hongjiang's baby-rearing described the bustling scene of Hongjiang: "At that time, there were a lot of clouds, such as cinnabar, ash, gum oil and the beauty of wood, which spread from the east to Dongting, and then the Yangtze River helped wuyue. The sails are large, the goods are piled up like mountains, and the rate is mainly cotton cloth. There is Guilin in the south and Yungui in the west, which is three times the profit of the city, the descendants of people living in the city, the flow of technology, the narrow land and many people, the mountains and rivers, the pavilions, just like the city in the southwest. "

In the 23rd year of the Republic of China (1934), among the 37,600 people in Hongjiang,13,000 were engaged in business. According to the statistics of the Republic of China in 19 (1930) and the Industrial Records of China in 22 years (1933), Hongjiang's currency circulation at that time ranked second in Hunan Province, second only to Changsha, the provincial capital, and became the political, economic and cultural center of western Hunan. Shen Congwen, a famous writer, wrote in the article "Several Counties in the Upper Reaches of Yuanjiang River": "From Chenxi to Hongjiang, Hongjiang is the center of Xiangxi ... usually called' Little Chongqing'." In The Ship of Changde, he described it this way: "A ship with great momentum and extraordinary weather should be a Hongjiang oil tanker. This kind of bow has many high tails, bright colors, and occasionally a little gold lacquer decoration ... It can transport three or four thousand barrels of tung oil on the downstream, and two thousand pieces of cotton or a ticket of salt on the upstream. Twenty-six to forty people use paddles, and thirty to sixty or seventy people use their hands. " According to 1938 waterway survey report, there are 5 1 1 wooden sailboats in Hongjiang, which shows the prosperity of the market. During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period, Hongjiang, located in the "rear area", experienced "wartime prosperity", and merchants from more than 20 provinces, cities, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions and foreign countries flocked to open more than 300 stores/kloc-0.