Endowment Fields for Zhongshan Academy in 1541

Date and content

Volume One of the Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer records that in 1541 the magistrate Xie Ting set up endowment fields for Zhongshan Academy. That single sentence is the whole entry.

二十年辛丑，知县谢廷置中山书院义田。 — Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer, 卷之一·邑纪·二十年辛丑

Translated: In the twentieth year, the zhixian (county magistrate) Xie Ting set up endowment fields for Zhongshan Academy.

Background

Endowing learning with land was already an established practice in Lishui: school fields were granted in 1382, and in 1528 the magistrate Gao Chong and the education officer Li Dan "jointly set up endowment fields, kept for the school", the words "kept for the school" showing that the land served the county school. The fields of 1541 are attached in the record to Zhongshan Academy, whose use is not stated in that entry. School fields were added twice more, in 1574 and 1579.

A related discovery

According to the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism's report on the fourth national survey of cultural relics, in December 2024 surveyors in Lishui measured and recorded a stele titled "Record of Land and Buildings Granted by the Office to Zhongshan Academy". The report describes it as a Ming stele connected with the Jingnan Campaign, now kept in a pavilion in Zhuangyuan Fang Park in Lishui. The report is an interim survey notice and does not reproduce the inscription; no available source relates the stele to the endowment fields of 1541, and no inference is drawn here. The stele is at present a newly recorded survey item, not a graded protected site.

Uncertainties

First, the gazetteer gives no founding date, site or history for Zhongshan Academy; this entry records only the endowment of fields and cannot be used to date the academy's foundation to 1541.

Second, the extent, location and rental income of the fields are not recorded, nor is it said whether official land was assigned or private land bought.

Third, since the inscription on the stele of 2024 is not reproduced in any available source, it cannot be compared with the endowment of 1541.