A Plea to Turn Three Lakes into Polders, 1125 CE

Date and content

In the ninth month of 1125 CE, the seventh year of the Xuanhe era, Lu Xiang, described in the record as zhifu shi, an administrator of prefectural rank, asked that the Shijiu, Gucheng and Danyang lakes be turned into polder fields. The gazetteer records:

九月，知府事卢襄请罢石臼、固城、丹阳三湖为圩田。

Translated: In the ninth month Lu Xiang, an administrator of prefectural rank, asked that the Shijiu, Gucheng and Danyang lakes be abolished as lakes and made into polder fields. This is a translation, not the words of the original.

To "abolish the three lakes as polders" meant enclosing the lake surfaces with embankments and turning them into farmland. The gazetteer gives Lu Xiang the title zhifu shi and does not say which prefecture he administered; in that year Lishui was under Jiangning Prefecture.

The three lakes

The names of the Shijiu, Gucheng and Danyang lakes appear elsewhere in the same gazetteer — the entry for 1403, on the sluices and dams at Guangtong, mentions "the waters of the Yanzhi River and Shijiu Lake". The extent of the three lakes and the counties they lay in are not recorded in this entry.

Consequences

The gazetteer does not say whether the request was granted. Under 1153 it records the grant of the Yongfeng Polder to Qin Hui and notes in its own comment that "Lishui now has the Yongfeng Polder", so polder land existed in Lishui by the early Southern Song. Whether the Yongfeng Polder had anything to do with the request of 1125 is not stated.

Uncertainties

The gazetteer records no text of the memorial, no outcome, and no acreage for the proposed conversion. Since the entry preserves only the request, the confidence level is set to medium.