Qianshan is a subdistrict of Xiangzhou District, Zhuhai, in Guangdong Province in the People's Republic of China. Formerly an important military base overseeing the Portuguese-administered enclave of Macao, it is now a Chinese manufacturing center, with particular emphasis on household appliances, airconditioners, and printing supplies. Name Qiánshān is the pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of the subdistrict's Chinese name , meaning "Front Hill". This was formerly also written as "Tsëen-shan" using Robert Morrison's system, "Ch‘ien-shan" using the Wade-Giles system, and as "Sinshan" for the Chinese Postal Map. The same characters are pronounced Cin-saan or Tchin-Sán in Cantonese; this was also formerly written "Tchin-shang" or "" by Portuguese authorities on Macao. In historical records, the name also sometimes appears as Tsëen-shan-chae, from the addition of zhài (, jzaai⁶, "fort" or "stockade"). Qianshan was also formerly known as Casa Blanca, Casa-blanca, Casa Branca, Casa-branca, or Casa Braca from the white residence of the Macanese subprefect. History Qianshan was formerly a separate village, first settled under the Southern Song in AD1152 (Shaoxing22) to produce salt from the Qianshan River. The location once overlooked the inner harbor of Macao, whose border wall lay to its southwest and main settlement about 3 km farther. With the Portuguese developing a permanent enclave there during the late Ming, Qianshan—being the Chinese settlement nearest to its peninsula's northern border—was turned into a military outpost in 1621. By 1640, it comprised a 500-man garrison. Qianshan became the seat of the subprefect or "keun-min-foo" (t s jūnmínfǔ) in 1731. He was charged with dealing with the foreign settlement and overseeing their trade with Guangzhou ("Canton"). As part of these duties, he controlled the permits needed for pilots yǐnshuǐrén) of the ships sailing north through the Humen ("Bocca Tigris" or "Bogue") to the Huangpu Anchorage ("Whampoa", now Pazhou). He would ensure that foreign ships headed upriver had some cargo apart from silver dollars and bullion. He was also sometimes obliged to quarantine Macao's market, prohibiting Chinese farmers and merchants from trading there and supplying its food, in order to maintain the freedom of the area's Chinese to practice Buddhist and local rituals, which the Portuguese periodically attempted to prohibit. In the lead-up to the First Opium War, Lin Zexu and Deng Tingzhen visited Qianshan during their procession from Xiangshan (now Zhongshan) to visit the Portuguese authorities at Macao on 3 September 1839. From 1862 to 1874, the Qianshan River was