County Status and the County Seat

Founding, and what is recorded about the county seat

Lishui County was carved out of northwestern Liyang and the former lands of Danyang in 591, the eleventh year of the Kaihuang era. Where the county seat was first established is not recorded in Volume One (Annals) of the Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer. The works connected with the seat that do appear there are these:

• 1558, the thirty-seventh year of the Jiajing era: the zhixian (county magistrate) Zeng Zhen built the stone wall of Lishui;
• 1597, the twenty-fifth year of the Wanli era: the magistrate Xu Bida had the streets inside the wall repaired and paved with stone;
• 1645, the second year of the Shunzhi era: bandits crossed the wall by night and burned the county hall and the treasury;
• 1654, the eleventh year of the Shunzhi era: the magistrate Min Pailu rebuilt the county hall.

The gazetteer's entry for 1654 reads:

十一年甲午，知县闵派鲁重建县堂。自二年土寇焚后，县宰听政皆坐瓦砾中，庇以苇箔，至是始复旧观。

Translated: In the eleventh year, the cyclical year jiawu, the zhixian Min Pailu rebuilt the county hall. Since the burning by bandits in the second year the magistrates had held office among the rubble under reed matting, and only now was the former appearance restored.

It follows that the seat stood inside a wall, and that a stone wall existed by the Jiajing period at the latest. Where the seat was first established, and whether it was ever moved, are not recorded, and nothing is supplied here.

County, prefecture, county

The administrative status of Lishui changed four times: a county was founded in 591; it was raised to a zhou, or prefecture, of the middle rank in 1295, with a darughachi still appointed above the prefect; it was reduced to a county again in 1369, the second year of the Hongwu era, with an order to establish a county school; and in February 2013 the State Council approved the abolition of Lishui County and the establishment of Lishui District of Nanjing. The elevation to a prefecture is the only occasion on which Lishui ceased to be a county, from 1295 to 1369.

The editorial rules in the prefatory volume of the Guangxu edition state that "the county of Lishui was founded in the eleventh year of the Kaihuang era, and the table of changes through the dynasties has been fully collated" — the old gazetteers put the founding year and the collation of the administrative sequence at the head of the book, and the changes described here rest on that.

Rank and titles

The rank of the county is recorded three times in the old gazetteer: shang, the upper grade, in 620, when Lishui belonged to Yangzhou; ciji, a secondary metropolitan county, in 1129, when it belonged to Jiankang Prefecture; and, on its elevation in 1295, the middle rank as a prefecture.

The title of the chief official changed with county and prefecture status. Under the Yuan a county was headed by a magistrate, with the darughachi above him; after the elevation the prefecture was headed by a prefect, with the darughachi above him. Under the Ming and Qing the county was again headed by a zhixian: the gazetteer names, among others, Zeng Zhen, who built the stone wall in 1558; Xu Liangyan, who built a pagoda in the Wanli period; Liu Yinglei, who measured the fields in 1571; Fu Yingzhen, who set up the township covenants in 1574; and, in the Shunzhi period, Wang Guanying, Luo Jiashi and Min Pailu.

Uncertainties

First, where the seat was first established and whether it was ever moved are not recorded, and are not written up; all that the sources allow is the record of walls and offices built.

Second, the relation between the stone wall built in 1558 and the present built-up area of Lishui is not recorded.

Third, the darughachi is recorded twice: in 1276, when Lishui was still a county and the office ranked above the magistrate, and in 1295, when, after the elevation, it was still appointed and ranked above the prefect. The two titles are set side by side and not harmonised.