| "As you can see, Cranefish Town has gone through incredible growth--" |
| — Lao Beifong describing the rapid growth of Cranefish Town to Team Avatar.[1] |
Cranefish Town, alternatively known as Cranefish City,[2] was a large industrial settlement established on the shores of the western Earth Kingdom after the Hundred Year War.
The Earthen Fire Refinery, the world's first joint business venture between nations, was the impetus for the town's development. However, illegal mining linked to the refinery awakened General Old Iron, a spirit who Yangchen had previously battled. He was eventually defeated by members of Team Avatar.[3]
Following the destruction wrought by the powerful spirit, the town was rebuilt and later named Cranefish Town. The settlement subsequently experienced a period of extensive growth. Many new factories and other businesses were set up, attracting many migrants. However, its rapidly expanding society, its inequality and underlying societal tensions eventually created strife between benders and nonbenders, culminating in Liling's bender supremacist movement.[4] This insurrection was put down by Avatar Aang and other members of Team Avatar.[4]
In the aftermath of the Harmony Restoration Movement, industry, trade, and innovation continued to expand in the city,[2] later joining with Yu Dao and other former Fire Nation colonies to form the United Republic of Nations, with Cranefish Town, now known as Republic City, as its capital.[5][6]
History[]
Origins[]
- See also: Tienhaishi
The area which Cranefish Town would later occupy was first settled by humans in the distant past. Under the protection of the local guardian spirit, Lady Tienhai, the settlement gradually expanded into Tienhaishi, a major city-state. However, the city was abandoned during Avatar Yangchen's time after Lady Tienhai died and another spirit, General Old Iron, attempted to destroy it in revenge. Centuries passed, and nature reclaimed Tienhaishi's ruins,[3][7] though a few small villages grew in its stead.[4]
The construction of the Earthen Fire Refinery led to the town's development.
The Fire Nation conquered the northwestern Earth Kingdom during the Hundred Year War, and established several colonies in the wider region.[5] Following the war's end in 100 AG, Fire Lord Zuko and Earth King Kuei signed the Treaty of Yu Dao, allowing the older Fire Nation colonies to become autonomous under local governments.[8] As a result of the mixture of different cultures and the war's end, business quickly began to boom in the old colonies. People seeking work were attracted by this development, and the northwestern Earth Kingdom witnessed an influx of migrants from across the globe.[2] The world's first joint business venture between Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom citizens, the Earthen Fire Refinery, was set up to mine the large crystal depository under the area where Tienhaishi was originally located. The refinery quickly attracted bender and nonbender workers and merchants. A small village, originally consisting of a single street and three shops, was set up to support the Earthen Fire Refinery by 102 AG.[3][7][9]
Awakening of General Old Iron[]
Early Cranefish Town was small, but already marked by industry.
Headed by Loban and Lao Beifong, the Earthen Fire Refinery continued to thrive in terms of its economic and technological development; though much of the work at the refinery was done by benders, the automated machinery developed by Loban's nephew, Satoru, allowed nonbender workers the opportunity to take on new roles and responsibilities.[9] Beyond processing crystals, Loban began mining a large iron deposit underneath the town, using the refinery's labor to extract it, all the while lying to Lao about the existence of the operation, despite their partnership.[7]
In 102 AG, the town received a visit from Team Avatar and the Air Acolytes, the groups having intended to celebrate Yangchen's Festival at its traditional site. Disheartened by the pollution and development on traditional Air Nomad lands that the town and refinery were causing, Aang attempted to bring his issues to the attention of Satoru, only to be ignored as the young inventor began a partnership with Toph Beifong, the metalbender being interested in supporting the progressive technologies with her new bending art.[9] They were all of them, however, interrupted by several earthquakes that devastated the refinery's production line, drawing the attention of Lao, Loban, and their security force, the Rough Rhinos. After Team Avatar refused to leave, they were attacked by the Rough Rhinos; during the skirmish, Sokka blew a hole in the side of a nearby canyon with a bomb. Investigating the revealed subterranean tunnel with Katara, the two of them discovered the location of Loban's illegal iron mining operation, which lay underneath the town, and was destabilizing the earth.[7] Unbeknownst to him, Loban had discovered the pieces of General Old Iron's armor, which had laid undisturbed underground for hundreds of years.[3]
General Old Iron arrives at the town to enact his punishment on its human denizens.
By conversing with Avatar Yangchen, his past life, Aang was able to learn about the agreement General Old Iron had made with the Avatar and the original denizens of the area, wherein the spirit agreed to lay down his arms so long as Yangchen's Festival continued to be celebrated, and the land left in repose. The illegal mining caused General Old Iron to awaken, and with the Air Nomad Genocide having stopped the festival from being celebrated, he proceeded to emerge from the nearby bay, intending to unleash his wrath on the town. Figuring that the spirit would cease his rampage if the town and refinery were gone, Aang attempted to destroy both of them while Sokka and Katara helped evacuate Satoru and the other workers. However, the Avatar's efforts were stopped by Toph and her metalbending students, who refused to let Aang destroy the refinery, and what it stood for as a symbol of unity and peace. Their short feud would end after General Old Iron arrived and began attacking the town; forced to destroy the spirit, Toph and her students stripped Old Iron's armor away, weakening him enough that Aang was able to land a fatal blow on the spirit with his bending. As the spirit lamented that dominating human nature would always lead to imbalance with spirits and the natural world, General Old Iron transformed into several lobster spirits that disappeared beneath the water, his violence at an end.[3]
Reconstruction[]
The Spirits' Friendship Festival was instituted in Cranefish Town around 102 AG.
The town was rebuilt in the aftermath of the General's destruction, starting with the refinery as the primary economic driver. The town underwent rapid expansion as new factories and buildings were constructed. To reconnect the denizens with the spirit of the land they inhabited, and to respect the promise Yangchen had made, Avatar Aang instituted the Spirits' Friendship Festival.
The rebuilt town was named for the first time in honor of the cranefish that inhabited the area due to the area's links to the Lady Tienhai.[1][7] As a result of its rapid expansion, Cranefish Town came to be plagued by unemployment and poverty, especially after new technologies were introduced that resulted in many benders being laid off to reduce costs, with their tasks being entirely automated. Many benders took offense to this and refused to work for factories owned by nonbenders in protest. To bring some order to the chaotic situation in the growing town, several local factory owners set up the "Business Council" as an ad hoc local government.[1]
Liling's bender supremacist movement[]
Cranefish Town rapidly expanded into a bustling city, albeit plagued by unemployment and poverty.
Resentful and jobless benders consequently formed criminal gangs that robbed nonbenders, fomented unrest, and fought turf wars with each other. When Team Avatar arrived in Cranefish Town, they witnessed a dispute between a firebender and an earthbender gang that led to the destruction of nonbenders' homes.
Lao Beifong proposed banning public bending to stop the conflicts between benders and nonbenders. However, this only made the Business Council's bender members to further distrust the nonbender councilman, accusing him of having an anti-bender agenda. Avatar Aang rejected Lao's suggestion and proposed creating a police force, seconded by Liling, who revealed she had recruited a security team of benders from Cranefish Town's population. When Liling called for a vote on Aang's proposal, the entire council voted in favor. In truth, however, Liling had ulterior motives, posing as a voice of reason in public even as she conspired for a violent revolution in Cranefish Town.[1]
The city's nonbender owned factories were soon plagued by a series of attacks, which Toph Beifong discovered were carried out by Liling's daughters, Ru and Yaling. Toph gained Yaling's trust so that Team Avatar could infiltrate Liling's underground meeting for bender supremacists, where the Avatar's allies managed to overpower all of Liling's followers and imprison her in a cage inside the Earthen Fire Refinery.[4]
Liling's bender supremacist movement threatened to tear Cranefish Town apart.
Cranefish Town's Business Council building was set on fire following Liling's imprisonment. While Team Avatar went to douse the fire and rescue those trapped inside, Liling's followers managed to free her from the Earthen Fire Refinery. In order to prepare for an upcoming confrontation with the bender supremacists, Suki trained the factory's nonbender guards in chi-blocking to prepare for battle.
Team Avatar and the factory's guards confronted Liling for the final time outside the Earthen Fire Refinery. When Aang entered the Avatar State, he prepared to take Liling's bending away but was stopped by Katara, and he instead resolved to fight the poison she had spread around the city.
Lao Beifong thanked Suki for her help in detaining most of the bender supremacists, and Aang informed him that Suki had agreed to stay and bring the Kyoshi Warriors to train Cranefish Town's nonbender police, with Aang adding that trustworthy benders would be added to the police force in time. When Satoru asked if benders and nonbenders could truly work together after everything that had transpired, Aang and Suki enthusiastically responded that they could. Aang told Katara and the rest of Team Avatar that he felt a special connection to Cranefish Town, thinking that it could become something special if it could overcome its problems. Katara and Aang agreed that he should stay in Cranefish Town and that the city needed the both of them.[10]
Later history[]
The Kyoshi Warriors, joined by Ty Lee, helped to improve law and order, train the native police, and proved vital in dealing with the conflict between benders and nonbenders.[11][12] Fire Lord Zuko also began to visit Cranefish Town after he saw that Avatar Aang was spending a lot of time to help the city grow.[13]
Cranefish Town was home to the successful academic known as "Wise" Shiang. Her younger sister, Ruiquan Shiang, was an academic in her own right, and was annoyed that she could never seem to measure up to her sister's accomplishments. Ruiquan planned to change her luck by spreading rumors around town that there was an ancient tome hidden within the city, which supported all of her theories. Rumors embedded themselves so thoroughly throughout town that they attracted the attention of Wan Shi Tong in the Spirit World. The spirit sent his Knowledge Seekers to Cranefish Town to search for the tome, and they started causing all sorts of mischief throughout the city.[14]
Legacy[]
The Republic City district of "Old Cranefish Town" was a direct continuation of the original settlement.
The greatest and most important change to Cranefish Town's continued expansion came when Avatar Aang, Fire Lord Zuko, and Earth King Kuei together agreed to officially support the former Fire Nation colonies as an entirely new nation. This new nation, called the United Republic, welcomed people from the four nations, and Cranefish Town, renamed Republic City, became its capital[15] and one of the largest and most technologically advanced cities in the world.[6] The town's infrastructure was considerably improved, and a large amount of new land was developed. Avatar Aang also constructed the sole airbender-inhabited air temple in the world on Air Temple Island in Yue Bay.[16] The oldest and most historic district of Republic City continued to be known as Old Cranefish Town, with many of the earliest families of the city continuing to value tradition.[17][18]
Government[]
- Main article: Cranefish Town Business Council
Initially lacking a formal government, Cranefish Town was led by a council of business owners.
With no officially established government, the running of the city was overseen by the Cranefish Town Business Council, comprised of a group of local factory owners, thus making it a corporatocracy. Acting as a deliberative assembly, representatives originated from the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Water Tribe, though the functioning of the council was hampered by infighting between the bending and nonbending members during the Bending Supremacist Uprising. The council included Lao Beifong and Liling.[1]
As Cranefish Town and other settlements developed into the United Republic, a new council was instituted to represent the diverse ethnocultural composition of the new country, including the denizens of the former Cranefish Town.[19][20]
Law and order[]
As a result of its rapid expansion, Cranefish Town came to be plagued by unemployment and poverty, especially after new technologies were introduced that resulted in many layoffs. Resentful and jobless benders consequently formed criminal gangs which mostly robbed and abused nonbenders, mainly the town's poor. They also fought each other in destructive turf wars.[1]
Suki trained Lao Beifong's guards in chi-blocking.
As the town lacked a proper police force in its first years, this resulted in the guards of different factories being mobilized to provide security. However, their effectiveness was dimished by their small numbers, lack of experience in policing, and their remaining loyalty to business owners instead of the common people.[1] As a result of the Bending Supremacist Uprising, Lao Beifong's guards[10][12][11] and the Kyoshi Warriors became the town's de facto police.[21] The latter trained the local guards in chi-blocking to make them more effective.[10][12][11] A prison was also established.[21]
Despite the efforts of its growing police, Cranefish Town continued to suffer under widespread crime, and increasingly well-organized criminal groups became a major threat by the time the settlement had been transformed into Republic City.[22] They would evolve into large crime syndicates known as triads.[22][23]
Culture[]
Cranefish Town's culture was marked by ethnic and social diversity.
Cranefish Town was known for its multicultural identity, welcoming people from all walks of life and from every nation,[24] reflecting the diverse backgrounds of its residents, and forming a melting-pot for the different nations.[1] This made the city, alongside the remaining old Fire Nation colonies, culturally unique.[2] The culture of the town was deeply rooted in its industry, which lent the city a hardscrabble feel. Its diversity made Cranefish Town an attractive place for migrants seeking to escape cultural confinements or who felt that they did not belong to existing communities.[11] Immigrants were welcome to make a home in the village and it thrived thanks to the diversity of people within its borders.[24]
Cranefish Town's culture was also marked by the rising tensions between benders and nonbenders, a development which would result in the world's first organized bender supremacist movement. These extremist ideas eventually spread worldwide, but remained most prominent in their place of origin.[8][25][11]
Layout[]
The city was laid out around what would later become Yue Bay and included docks near the bay as well as factories further inland, particularly the refinery.[1] There was also a river into which some of the effluents from the refinery, as well as Loban's illegal mining, flowed, resulting in severe contamination until remedied by Team Avatar.[9][7]
Locations[]
Notable locations included the city's raison d'être, the Earthen Fire Refinery.[9] The docks also represented an important part of town, allowing the trade of the city's many products.[10] The cabbage merchant also operated his restaurant within the town.[7] There were also many factories in Cranefish Town and numerous residences to house the workers.[1]
Business Council building[]
As the community's nascent government authority, the Cranefish Town Business Council convened in a building that, at the time of Team Avatar's second visit to the city, was still under construction. The council chambers were based in a large room with overlooking balconies on either side. Council members sat along two tables arranged parallel to one another; councillors or important figures with business relating to community affairs could speak at an elevated lectern placed at the head of the tables to address the rest of the assembly. The layout of the chambers eventually came to reflect the divisions affecting Cranefish Town's citizens, as bender and nonbender council members segregated themselves by sitting with their peers, the informal blocs arguing with each other from opposite ends of the room.[1] During Liling's failed attempt to remove nonbenders from Cranefish Town, her supporters set the building ablaze during a council session, though the business leaders inside were rescued from the conflagration by Toph Beifong.[10]
Cabbage Delicacies Bistro[]
- Main article: Cabbage Delicacies Bistro
The Cabbage Delicacies Bistro was a culinary establishment owned and operated by a merchant of cabbage during Cranefish Town's early development. In line with the owner's background, the restaurant's cuisine was based entirely around cabbage, the vegetable being fused with various types of food, such as pastries, pasta, and soups.[7]
Coastal island[]
- Main article: Air Temple Island
Off the waters near Cranefish Town, a small island rested in the bay, lush with vegetation. Though much of the surrounding area on the mainland was settled and industrialized as the town expanded, the island remained untouched. During their second visit to Cranefish Town, Aang and Katara visited the island, wanting a tranquil place to discuss the instability in the settlement.[1] It would eventually become Air Temple Island, home to the Air Acolytes.[26]
Earthen Fire Refinery[]
- Main article: Earthen Fire Refinery
The first of many factories that made up Cranefish Town's industrial base, the Earthen Fire Refinery was a pillar of the fledgling town's community, both economically and as a symbol of progress following the Hundred Year War. Primarily focused on processing and exporting the abundant wealth of crystals mined underneath the town, the refinery, itself a joint venture between entrepreneurs of different nations, employed laborers from all over the world to work the assembly lines, whether through bending arts like metalbending or utilizing new technologies developed for nonbenders by the refinery's own engineers like Satoru.[9] It was for these reasons that Earthen Fire Industries' facility was targeted, first by General Old Iron as punishment for the human presence in the area, then by Liling's supporters as part of their efforts to ensure the bending community's supremacy in the settlement.[3][10]
Lady Tienhai's statue[]
Aang and some companions admiring the statue.
Located a short distance from the town's initial location, a stone statue dedicated to Lady Tienhai stood at a cliff overlooking the bay, memorializing the ancient spirit who had lived in the area as a human.[3] In the time before the Hundred Year War, the Air Nomads conducted an annual ceremony, named Yangchen's Festival, where the monks would pay their respects to the spirit at the statue's site, before engaging in festive music, meals, and recreational activities.[9] Abandoned for more than a hundred years after the Air Nomads were nearly wiped out, the statue was destroyed by several powerful earthquakes caused by human mining in the area.[3]
Liling's house[]
Though most of Cranefish Town was dominated by factories and ramshackle apartment blocks, there also existed upper-class villas such as Liling's house.
As a factory owner and a councilwoman of the city, Liling's house is larger than most. It is surrounded by a well-kept garden and bordered by a tall wall. The front gate takes to a rock path that leads to the front door stairs. The path is surrounded by grass and a little pond with a stones border. The main building has two floors and a green tile roof, while its interiors are described by Sokka as "the fanciest non-palace house [he has] ever seen". The living room where Team Avatar was received displayed colorful decorations on its beige walls, including at least four guó huà paintings. A tea table lies on its center, surrounded by wooden chairs and furniture, one which served as a surface for an Avatar Kyoshi clay statuette that was accidentally destroyed by Momo and quickly replaced by a metal one made by Toph.[4]
Mining tunnel network[]
Owing to the area's high deposits of crystals and iron, Earthen Fire Industries owners Loban and Lao Beifong constructed several mines during their initial development of Cranefish Town, resulting in a series of underground tunnels that ran underneath the settlement.[7] Ostensibly, the iron mine tunnels were condemned and slated to be filled in following the discovery that Loban's illicit operation of the mine was causing pollution and seismic activity in the area. Such plans never took place, however, as renegade elements within Cranefish Town's community continued to take advantage of the subterranean passageways for their own ends, most notably when the tunnels were used to conceal the site for councilwoman Liling's fledgling uprising against nonbenders.[4] Over the next decades, the tunnel system under Cranefish Town further expanded and ultimately developed into the extensive Republic City underground.[27][28]
Notable figures[]
- Firebender gang
- Lao Beifong
- Lao Beifong's guards
- Lian and Shen
- Liling
- Loban
- Ru
- Ruiquan Shiang
- Satoru
- "Wise" Shiang
- Yaling
Trivia[]
- Sokka considered Cranefish Town to be "a terrible name".[1]
- In "And the Winner Is...", a Cabbage Corp advertisement on the radio describes the company as "Republic City's trusted name in technology for over fifty years". This indicates that the evolution of Cranefish Town into Republic City occurred, to some extent, by 120 AG, a mere twenty years after the end of the Hundred Year War.[29]
- The design of Cranefish Town on Team Avatar's first visit was intended to feel "like it had grown far too fast, without much concern for the people living in it".[30]