Zeng Zhen Builds the Stone Wall of Lishui, 1558

Background

The gazetteer places the building of the wall in 1558. Three years earlier it records an attack by Japanese pirates in which the town was nearly lost:

三十四年乙卯，倭犯溧水城，几陷。勇士李佛保死之。事详《传》。 — Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer, 卷之一·邑纪·三十四年乙卯

Translated: In the thirty-fourth year, Japanese pirates attacked the town of Lishui, which nearly fell. The brave man Li Fobao died. See the biography for details.

Three entries separate the two passages: one records that the town nearly fell, the other that a stone wall was built. The gazetteer does not put the wall and the pirate raid in the same sentence, and this entry does not decide for the source that the wall was built against pirates. Also worth noting is the entry for 1538, when dragons emerging from the hills at Lushan and Ma'anshan in Lishui "swept the city walls away and drowned people and livestock beyond counting", showing that the walls had earlier been damaged by water.

Time and place

The wall was built in 1558 at the county town of Lishui, under the magistrate Zeng Zhen.

What was done

三十七年戊午，知县曾震筑溧水石城。 — Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer, 卷之一·邑纪·三十七年戊午

Translated: In the thirty-seventh year, the zhixian (county magistrate) Zeng Zhen built the stone wall of Lishui.

This one sentence is the whole entry; it gives no length, no number of gates, no material and no duration of work.

Consequences

The county town of Lishui had a stone wall from that year. The next year the gazetteer records that floods burst the polders and washed away houses, and that the county school was moved inside the west gate, which shows that "the west gate" was already a standard way of locating places in the town. No later entry records repairs to the wall or the addition of gates.

Uncertainties

First, the gazetteer gives no circumference, height, number of gates or stone used, and does not say whether the town had previously had an earthen wall or none at all.

Second, it does not state that the wall was built because of the pirate raid of 1555. The two entries stand next to each other and may be read as a clue, but not as proof, so the confidence of this entry is set to medium.

Third, the entry for 1555 refers the story of Li Fobao to a biography not contained in this volume; only his name and death are recorded here.

Fourth, no source relates the stone wall to the west gate mentioned in 1559, and the line of the wall is not drawn here from the phrase "inside the west gate".