A Plea about the Three Lakes and their 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, memorialised about the polder land of the Shijiu, Gucheng and Danyang lakes. 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.

The title zhifu shi denotes the administrator of Jiangning Prefecture. The Yuan gazetteer Zhida Jinling Xinzhi, in its "Records of Officials", dates Lu Xiang's tenure to the fifth to seventh years of Xuanhe, recording that "in the fifth year, guimao, Lu Xiang administered the prefecture with the title of Attendant of the Xuanhe Pavilion" and that "in the seventh year, yisi, Xiang was transferred to Huzhou". Lu Xiang therefore held the office of administrator of Jiangning Prefecture from 1125 to 1127, and the memorial falls within his tenure; the gazetteer's "administrator of prefectural rank" also agrees with the Ming water-conservancy work's "Lu Xiang, Attendant". In that year Lishui was under Jiangning Prefecture.

A divergence between the sources

The Ming Complete Book of Water Conservancy in the Wu Region, juan 19, includes Han Bangxian's "Study of the Guangtong Dam", which records the same memorial in the opposite sense:

……等圩，官司所筑无虑数十万，而固城、石臼、丹阳之间，大抵多圩田矣。宣和中待制卢襄奏罢湖田，及言开银林湖为非切务，于时田方属蔡、秦、韩诸将相家……

Translated: …and other polders, built by the authorities in numbers beyond counting; and between Gucheng, Shijiu and Danyang there was for the most part a great deal of polder land. In the Xuanhe period Lu Xiang, Attendant, memorialised for the abolition of the lake-polders, and said that opening Lake Yinlin was not a matter of urgency; at that time the fields belonged to the families of the generals and ministers Cai, Qin and Han. This is a translation, not the words of the original.

The same event thus admits of two opposite readings. The county gazetteer's "asked that the three lakes be abolished as polders" can be read as a plea to abolish the lakes and make polders of them; Han Bangxian's "memorialised for the abolition of the lake-polders" reads as a plea to abolish the existing lake-polders and restore the lakes. The two rest on different texts of different periods — a Qing county gazetteer and a Ming water-conservancy study — and this entry sets them out side by side without preferring either.

The three lakes and the polders

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". Han Bangxian's study has the three lakes receiving the waters of Xuan, She, Jinling, Gushu, Guangde and the Great River, and their country "for the most part" already polder land; the extent of the three lakes and the counties they lay in are not divided between them by either source. Han Bangxian's phrase that "at that time the fields belonged to the families of the generals and ministers Cai, Qin and Han" assigns the polders of the Xuanhe period to Cai Jing, Qin Hui and Han Shizhong, whereas Qin Hui and Han Shizhong received the Yongfeng Polder only in the Shaoxing period (see src:wenxian-tongkao, src:songhuiyao-jigao). Han's text is a later retrospect and conflates the periods; this entry does not use it to assert that the fields already belonged to Qin and Han in the Xuanhe period.

Consequences

Whether the memorial was granted is recorded by neither the gazetteer nor Han Bangxian's study. Under 1153 the gazetteer 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 memorial of 1125 is stated by no source.

Uncertainties

First, the direction of the memorial is read two ways: the gazetteer has "asked that the Shijiu, Gucheng and Danyang lakes be made into polders", while the Ming Complete Book of Water Conservancy in the Wu Region, quoting Han Bangxian, has "in the Xuanhe period Lu Xiang, Attendant, memorialised for the abolition of the lake-polders". The two are set out side by side, neither is preferred, and this entry does not conclude whether Lu Xiang urged the making or the undoing of polders.

Second, neither source records the text of the memorial, its outcome, or any acreage for the proposed conversion.

Third, Han Bangxian's phrase assigning the fields of the Xuanhe period to the families of Cai, Qin and Han conflicts with the dates at which Qin Hui and Han Shizhong received the Yongfeng Polder, which fall in the Shaoxing era; it is a later retrospect that conflates periods, and this entry merely reproduces it and notes the inconsistency. The confidence level is accordingly set to medium.