Jianyang has rich natural resources: bamboo, tea and water power.
History
The bamboo was used for paper manufacturing, and the commercial publishers there, thriving on locally produced paper, from the 11th-17th Centuries, were amongst the biggest three of the Song dynasty and Yuan dynasty. The area continued to be an important center of book printing into the Ming epoch.Since the Southern Song, the county was served by the so-called Chongan trade route, connecting Quanzhou on the Fujian coast (the nation's major port for trade with Southeast Asia in those days) with northeastern Jiangxi province. It allowed shipping of local products, notably books, to the major markets of lower Yangtze region using mostly water transport, with just a few portages.
Famous people
Jianyang bore a famous legal medical expert Song Ci, who wrote a famous book Xi yuan ji lu; it was the first book about legal medical research, and laid a solid foundation for China's medical jurisprudence. This year a teleplay called A Legal Medical Expert of the Song Dynasty was popular, more than 200 million people watching it at 8 pm; the audience rating passed the CCTV News.Zhu Xi was a philosopher of the Song Dynasty who taught in Kaoting college in Jianyang.