Dating the Yanzhi River and Its Method of Excavation

What needs to be examined

The Yanzhi River is one of the few Ming works in Lishui with a definite date attached to it, and precisely because it is cited so often the disagreements between sources show up clearly. Three points need examination: the year the work began, how long it took, and what became of Li Xin, the man in charge.

The start year: 1393 or 1391

The gazetteer is the most straightforward. The Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer, in its first juan, places the cutting of the river under the twenty-sixth year of the Hongwu era, guiyou — that is, 1393 — and the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism likewise writes that it was "cut in the twenty-sixth year of the Hongwu era (1393)". The Nanjing Municipal Water Resources Bureau, however, writes "from the twenty-fourth year of the Hongwu era (1391)", two years earlier.

Nothing in the available material shows one account displacing the other. One possible explanation is a difference between "begun" and "completed" — the start of work and the through-cutting of the main channel need not fall in the same year — but the water bureau's wording, "from 1391, taking nearly five years", refers on its face to the start, not the completion. Another possibility is that one account describes the survey and preparation and the other the actual cutting, though no source says so. This entry follows the gazetteer, setting time.start to 1393 and marking approx as true to signal that a second date exists.

The duration: nearly five years, or more than ten

The provincial culture and tourism department says that "several hundred thousand labourers were organised, more than ten years were spent, and fifteen li of river were cut by burning the rock". The municipal water resources bureau says that "from 1391, over nearly five years, this man-made canal was finally cut through". The two figures differ by more than a factor of two.

One reasonable reconciliation is that the main channel took about five years while the full works, including sluices and dams, were finished much later, making more than ten years in all. There is supporting evidence for this: under the first year of the Yongle era (1403) the gazetteer records that because the waters of the Yanzhi River and Shijiu Lake ran into one another instead of reaching the Yangtze, the people of Lishui asked for a sluice at Guangtong, and the court, after sending an official to inspect, agreed to "build sluices and dams at two places, at Yanzhi Hill and Guangtong and at the mouth of Gucheng Lake" — showing that ancillary water works were still being added after the river was open. But this is this site's inference; no source states it. The entry therefore presents both accounts without deciding between them, and confidence is set to medium.

The method

The phrase "burning the rock to cut the river" comes from the provincial culture and tourism account and refers to heating the stone with fire before cutting it. It matches the gazetteer's note that 凿石色赤, "the stone cut was red" — the rock of Yanzhi Hill is red, and the river took its name, "rouge", from it. A folk account that vinegar was used to crack the stone does not appear in any source held by this site and is not adopted.

Tradition and record

At the end of its entry on the cutting, the gazetteer adds that "it is handed down that Li Xin took private advantage of a household, and the founding emperor put him to death; the matter is set out under Tiansheng Bridge". The original already qualifies the story with "it is handed down", which shows that the gazetteer itself did not treat it as established. This entry reproduces it with that qualification intact and does not turn it into a statement of fact; Li Xin's life and fate belong to the biographical section, and only the existence of the tradition is recorded here.

Conclusion

The start year and the duration each have two versions, which this site sets side by side without choosing. What is certain is that the work began in the Hongwu period, that it was supervised by Li Xin, Marquis of Chongshan, that the channel ran from the mouth of the Qinhuai River south to Honglan Wharf and into Shijiu Lake, and that a boulder was left standing in the river to serve as a bridge. The disagreement over dates does not affect these main facts, but any citation of a specific year should note that the other version exists.