Funghuwang is a city on the Gulf of Rong (Gulf of Harmony) in the Northern Earth Kingdom. It is a de jure part of the State of Yi, but it was annexed by the Yonggan State, motivated by the irredentist concerns of the Yonggan government under the khagan's son-in-law, the Nationalist warlord Gioro Emoto Dabciku.
Before being transferred to the State of Yi as a result of the Earth Kingdom Civil War, Funghuwang had been controlled by the Tatara khan and was considered part of the Yonggan State, albeit as a city with special privileges of devolved local governance. However, the city was not founded by Yonggan; it originated as a Shuizu (tributary water tribe) village, which intermixed with Beituzhu, Yonggan, Nitanese. Later, during the Ganjinese ascendancy, that ethnic group founded an enclave there, which remains active to the present. Since the time of Avatar Kyoshi, it has also been home to a community of Spire-God Villagers from the Far West, who have a pagoda and temple complex there, the farthest East one exists outside of Ganjin Country. Formerly, there was a significant Air Nomad community, with an urban skete and some Earth Kingdom converts. Funghuwang was raided early in the course of Sozin's campaigns to exterminate the Air Nomads, killing many of them because they did not realize that Sozin would be willing to attack the territory of the Earth Kingdom. Some avoided this fate. The minor monastery of the Soaring Religion was abandoned and is now used as a shrine to a Beituzhu bird spirit.
More recently, some mostly Zhongzu refugees have arrived, and there is a diffusion of the population with Chenbao and the Chenbaoese recolonization of Angxue State.
Funghuwang is a major seaport. Formerly, customs facilities controlled by the Earth Kingdom central government in Ba Sing Se collected tariffs and enforced various regulations on the North Sea Trade, but the officials responsible were expelled by the Tatara khan on a pretext years ago, and the Yonggan Nationalist government has managed to obstruct any new ones from arriving to replace them. The customs facilities are used as ordinary warehouses now, and the North Sea trade is booming under no tariffs and lax regulation generally. Smuggling is common (if such trade, illicit in the eyes of Ba Sing Se but openly tolerated by the Tatara khan, is considered such), though the khagan's government has made some efforts to prevent Chenbao Paradise Tincture from making it out of Funghuwang.
Besides its extensive trading activities with the Northern Water Tribes and the North coast of the Earth Kingdom, Funghuwang has substantial secondary and tertiary industries, and is the second most-populous city in Yonggan State, after Gainan and ahead of the de jure capital, Garunggu. There is a well-known Northern Way earthbending school there, teaching the Ganjinese style. A large tryworks processes marine mammals. The city is somewhat freewheeling and has some seedy districts, where visitors are supposedly at risk of being drugged and forcibly conscripted by Sagquralriit or Cagquralriit smugglers from the Northern Water tribe, or even pirates. Waterbenders and anyone with sailing experience are especially targeted by crimps. Though the Tatara khan has some Tributary Water Tribe allies and the National government has a few patrol boats in the Gulf of Rong, the Yonggan State is not a naval power and avoids confrontation with even known pirate ships, unless they engage in raiding Yonggan territory. This has made Funghuwang a common place for pirates to access the services of the civilized world, with local officials turning a blind eye to disreputable visitors, provided they don't cause too much trouble and, perhaps, pay the official a "pirate tax." Nationalist reformers decry the reputational damage this causes and the deleterious effects on the North Sea trade, but the Tatara khan does not seem to prioritize ending the corruption.
The Tatara khan is also known to favor a separate peace with the Fire Nation, and for a while, there was a Fire Nation military camp not too far north of Funghuwang for a time, supporting the needs of the Fire Navy in the North Sea. It has since been abandoned, ostensibly because it was not needed militarily, though this may have been a face-saving story to avoid a military confrontation between the Fire Nation and the Yonggan State. Another rumor has it that, under pressure from the khagan, the Tatara Khan actually paid the Fire Nation a bribe to relocate the camp.