Famine and the Building of Fengxian Polder, 1588

Background

The Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer, juan 1, "Annals of the County", records drought at Lishui in 1587, the fifteenth year of the Wanli era, and the following year brought a great famine:

十六年戊子，岁大饥，人相食。知县杜允继申请应天府丞许，疏准动帑银，筑凤贤圩各埂，饥民赖之。是岁邑民汤凤冈、陈文心、龚廷机、杨鉴各捐谷赈之。见《义士传》。

Translated: In the sixteenth year, wuzi, there was a great famine and people ate one another. The magistrate Du Yunji applied to the assistant prefect of Yingtian Prefecture, surnamed Xu, and a memorial was approved releasing treasury silver to build the banks of Fengxian Polder, on which the starving depended. In the same year the local men Tang Fenggang, Chen Wenxin, Gong Tingji and Yang Jian each donated grain for relief. See the Biographies of Righteous Men.

Time and place

The work belongs to 1588, the sixteenth year of the Wanli era, the year of the famine. The gazetteer gives the name of the polder and says nothing about its position or boundaries, so this entry does not attempt to locate it.

What was done

The work was led by the magistrate Du Yunji. The gazetteer says he applied to the assistant prefect of Yingtian Prefecture, giving only the surname Xu; neither the man's name nor his full office is recorded. The money came from treasury silver, that is, silver released from the official coffers, which required a memorial to be approved first. The work itself was the building of the banks of Fengxian Polder, relief through labour, so that the famine victims had food. In the same year four local men, Tang Fenggang, Chen Wenxin, Gong Tingji and Yang Jian, each donated grain for relief; the gazetteer refers the reader to the Biographies of Righteous Men.

Consequences

The banks were completed and, in the gazetteer's words, the starving depended on them. In 1595, the twenty-third year of the Wanli era, a jiao flood — the gazetteer's term for a sudden, violent flood, discussed in the entry for that year — breached the county's polders, and the gazetteer notes that Fengxian Polder alone was unharmed. In the same year the magistrate Yu Yanxing urged the people to extend the banks, which then measured more than thirty li in all.

Uncertainties

First, the number of banks, their length and the sum spent are all unrecorded, and this entry makes no estimate. Second, the assistant prefect is known only by the surname Xu, and the man remains unidentified. Third, whether the banks built in 1588 and those extended in 1595 were the same stretch of embankment is not stated.