The Naming of the Yanzhi River and Yanzhi Hill

What needs to be examined

Why the Yanzhi River should be called "rouge" looks like no problem at all, but once the sources are laid out side by side they do not agree. The gazetteer attaches the name to a single clause about the colour of the rock, so that the colour came first and the name after it. Modern official accounts, on the other hand, mostly say the river was named for the hill it passes through, so that the hill name came first. The two put the naming in the opposite order. A third matter belongs with them: the boulder left standing in the channel to make the Tiansheng Bridge, and how it relates to the two names.

Two passages in the gazetteer

Under the entry for the cutting of the river, the Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer writes:

二十六年癸酉，八月，太祖命崇山侯李新至溧水，督有司凿县西境一带为河。凿石色赤，时名河胭脂。

Translated: In the twenty-sixth year, guiyou, in the eighth month, the founding emperor ordered Li Xin, Marquis of Chongshan, to go to Lishui and supervise the authorities in cutting a river through the western part of the county. The rock cut was red, and the river was then named Yanzhi.

The clause "the river was then named Yanzhi" does not say who gave the name, only that it was current at the time. The clause immediately following, "the rock cut was red", is the gazetteer's only explanation of where the name came from: the rock was red, hence "rouge". No hill is mentioned, and no ridge.

Ten years later the gazetteer records a place name that also carries the word. Under the first year of the Yongle era (1403) it relates that the people of Lishui asked for a sluice at Guangtong, and that the official sent to inspect reported:

宜于胭脂山、广通镇及固城湖口二处筑闸坝，设官掌之为便。从之。

Translated: It would be well to build sluices and dams at two places, at Yanzhi Hill and Guangtong and at the mouth of Gucheng Lake, and to appoint an officer to manage them. This was approved.

Here the word attaches to a hill, not to the river, and it is a usage ten years after the river was cut. The same entry also speaks of "the waters of the Yanzhi River and Shijiu Lake", so that river and hill appear together. In the gazetteer, then, the river name appears in the year of the cutting and the hill name ten years later.

The imperial instruction does not name the river

The entry on the cutting ends with the imperial instruction that gives the reason for the work: the taxes of the two Zhe circuits had to reach the capital by grain transport, either by leaving the boats and hauling overland at great cost or by fighting upstream against wind and wave with much loss by drowning; Li Xin was therefore ordered to supervise the work, since "it is now intended to open a channel from the capital region through to Zhe". The instruction nowhere uses the word "rouge" and gives no name to a river not yet cut. The name was evidently not fixed by decree but was the usage of the time or of later years, which is what the gazetteer's "was then named" implies.

The modern account: it lies at Yanzhi Hill

The district overview on the Lishui District People's Government website says: "Because it lies at Yanzhi Hill, it was named the Yanzhi River. When the Yanzhi River was cut, a great natural boulder arched in the air, spanning the cliffs on either bank." This derives the river name from the hill name, and so differs from the gazetteer's "the rock cut was red". The account by the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism deals only with the works, saying that the river was "cut in the twenty-sixth year of the Hongwu era (1393) ... several hundred thousand labourers were organised, more than ten years were spent, and fifteen li of river were cut by burning the rock", and says nothing of the naming. The Nanjing Municipal Water Resources Bureau's article likewise deals only with the organisation and duration of the works.

Which came first, the river name or the hill name?

Both accounts have something to support them. The gazetteer's "the rock cut was red, and the river was then named Yanzhi" is the earliest surviving statement and ties the name directly to the colour of the stone, without passing through the hill. The district overview's "because it lies at Yanzhi Hill" is later, but agrees with another passage in the gazetteer — the entry for 1403 already has "Yanzhi Hill", showing that within a few years of the cutting the hill too carried the word, so that river and hill shared one name.

This site's handling is to set the two side by side, taking the gazetteer as the earliest evidence, and not to decide the order between them. The reason is that whether the colour came first or the hill name came first, "rouge" refers in either case to the same body of rock that ran red when cut, and the two accounts are not mutually exclusive. That reading is this site's own; no source states it, and confidence is therefore set to medium.

The colour of the rock, and burning it

The gazetteer says "the rock cut was red" and does not say that fire made it red. The modern phrase "burning the rock to cut the river" describes a method of work, in which the stone was heated with fire before being cut. If the burning came first, the red colour might be its result; if the rock was red of itself, then burning was only a means of working it and has nothing to do with the colour. No source addresses the point, so the phrase cannot be used to argue that the name arose from burning. A further account, that vinegar was used to crack the stone, appears in no source held by this site and is not adopted.

One river, two names

The Nanjing Municipal Water Resources Bureau heads its article "the Yanzhi River (the Tiansheng Bridge River)", which shows that a second name is in use today, taken from the bridge formed by the boulder left in the channel. The gazetteer's river has only the one name, and "Tiansheng Bridge" has its own separate entry there. How widely each name is used, and which came first, is not stated by any source; only their existence is recorded here.

Uncertainties

First, on whether the river name or the hill name came first, the two accounts stand side by side and this site does not settle the question.

Second, whether "Yanzhi Hill" and the later "Yanzhi ridge" are two names for one place or a replacement of the generic element remains to be established.

Third, when the name arose and who gave it cannot be established: the gazetteer says only that it was the usage of the time, and gives neither a person nor a year.