How Lishui Became a County

Before the county

Lishui became a county under the Sui, but the area entered the administrative system of the central dynasties far earlier. After Qin unification in 221 BCE, the territory of present-day Lishui belonged to Liyang County in Kuaiji Commandery. In 202 BCE Liyang County was placed under Zhang Commandery, and in 121 BCE, when Zhang Commandery was abolished and Danyang Commandery set up, Liyang was transferred to Danyang. Through the Six Dynasties period this area saw a succession of short-lived counties — Yong'an, Yongshi, Pingling — but none of them was called Lishui. The name taken in the Sui therefore comes from the river, not from any earlier county.

Sui and Tang: founding, and a boundary that kept moving

In 589, the ninth year of the Kaihuang era, Danyang Commandery was abolished and Jiangzhou established; Liyang was transferred to Jiangzhou. In 591, the eleventh year of the Kaihuang era, Lishui County was carved out of northwestern Liyang and the former Danyang lands and remained under Jiangzhou. The Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer (卷之一·邑纪) closes this entry with the words 县之始, "the beginning of the county". In 598 Liyang was merged into Lishui, and the county grew; in 604 Jiangzhou was made into Danyang Commandery and Lishui was transferred to it.

The Tang brought the densest sequence of changes. In 620 Lishui and Jiangning counties were placed under Yangzhou, and in the same year Liyang was carved out of eastern Lishui, shrinking the county again. Lishui then passed through Jiangzhou, Yangzhou and Xuanzhou in turn; in 757 it was transferred to Jiangning Commandery, and in 758, when that commandery became Shengzhou, to Shengzhou. In 761 Shengzhou was abolished and Lishui returned to Xuanzhou; in 890 Shengzhou was restored and Lishui went back to it.

Song and Yuan: from Jiangning Prefecture to Jiqing Circuit

Under the early Song, Lishui belonged to Shengzhou. In 1018 Shengzhou became Jiangning Prefecture, and Lishui belonged to Jiangning. In 1129, the year the Song court crossed south, Jiangning was renamed Jiankang and Lishui was placed under Jiankang Prefecture at the rank of ciji, a secondary metropolitan county. That same year the Jin forces took Jiankang and Lishui with it; the county sheriff, Pan Zhen, died defending the town. The district government's account of the Song is a single sentence — "during the Song, it was Lishui County" — and the details have to be recovered from the gazetteers.

The Yuan is the only period in which Lishui was not a county. In 1295, the first year of the Yuanzhen era, Lishui was raised to a zhou, or prefecture, of the middle rank, with a darughachi (a supervising official) set above the prefect. In 1329 Jiqing Circuit was established in place of Jiankang Circuit, and Lishui Zhou was placed under it — the sentence on which the district government's "Lishui County was raised to Lishui Zhou, under Jiqing Circuit" is based.

Ming and Qing: back to a county, and the loss of Gaochun

In 1369, the second year of the Hongwu era, Lishui Zhou was made a county again, under Yingtian Prefecture. The Ming saw one major partition: in 1491, the fourth year of the Hongzhi era, the southwestern part of Lishui was detached to form Gaochun County, and the two have been administered separately since. Under the Qing, Lishui belonged to Jiangning Prefecture. The Guangxu edition of the gazetteer states in its editorial rules that "the county of Lishui was founded in the eleventh year of the Kaihuang era of the Sui, and the table of changes through the dynasties has been fully collated" — the old gazetteers themselves treated the founding year and the sequence of jurisdictions as the opening business of the book.

The Republican period and after 1949

For the Republican period the district government offers only that "the internal divisions of Lishui County were frequently changed" and goes no further. The sources held by this site are not sufficient to list the changes one by one, so this section is left open until a dedicated source is added.

On 25 April 1949 Lishui adopted the district system, under the Zhenjiang Prefecture of the Southern Jiangsu Administrative Office. The levels below the county were reorganised repeatedly: 7 districts and 31 townships in the autumn of 1949; the district level abolished in 1956 in favour of 16 townships and one town; 17 people's communes in 1958; a return to township and town organisation in 1984; and the completion of township-to-town consolidation in 2000, leaving 8 towns and one provincial development zone. When the Southern Jiangsu office was abolished in January 1953, Lishui came under Zhenjiang Prefecture of Jiangsu Province; in March 1983 it was transferred from Zhenjiang to Nanjing.

In February 2013, with the approval of the State Council (Guohan [2013] No. 24), Lishui County was abolished and Lishui District of Nanjing established over the same territory. The county government's own wording is that "Lishui thus ended 1,422 years of county history". Further adjustments followed: in July 2015 Yongyang and Zhetang towns were abolished and made subdistricts; in May 2018 Dongping, Honglan and Shiqiu towns were likewise made subdistricts. The district now has five subdistricts and three towns.

Uncertainties

First, the Republican period has no reliable source here and is not written up. Second, the origin of the name Lishui is explained in several different ways in the old gazetteers. The Kangxi edition lists the phonetic corruption of Laishui into Lishui, the reading of "north of the river is yang", and the Spring and Autumn record of the extinction of Lai together with the Gongyang and Guliang commentaries' variant 厉, and then admits that it "has never been able to establish where the name came from" and "would not venture to decide". The Guangxu edition says simply that "Zhenyang was established under the Han, and the name Lishui began under the Sui". These are the gazetteers' own arguments; this site sets them side by side and does not settle the question.