Jinjing Spring

Location and setting

Jinjing Spring stands at what is now Baishiguan Village, Jingqiao Town, Lishui District. In the list attached to the district government's notice on the third batch of district-level protected sites (Li Zheng Fa [2017] No. 197) it is recorded as Qing, at Baishiguan Village, Jingqiao Town.

"Jinjing" is also called "Fenjin Well". That name appears in the entry for Baishiguan under the "shrines and temples" section of juan three of the Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer. The entry places Baishiguan "sixty-five li to the southeast, among the Jingshan hills", quotes the Jinling Gazetteer for the tradition that this was "the place where Bian He once obtained jade", notes a statue of Bian He in the hall and a square pool in the precinct — the well in question — and identifies it with Li Bai's "from the white stone the fenjin well is divided". It records the form of the well and its use as follows:

"The well is only three or four chi deep; if a stone is thrown into it, the water on top boils up like pearls. The fields can be seven mu, irrigated by the well water, all of them within the precinct. The precinct was rebuilt by a man of the county, Chen Hui."

This is the earliest primary material this entry can verify, and it gives four data points: a depth of three or four chi, water boiling like pearls when a stone is dropped in, seven mu of fields irrigated, and the field and the well lying together within the precinct. The same volume of the gazetteer separately places Chongqing Temple "eight li southeast", so the two entries corroborate each other on the bearings of this area.

The name and the saying of twelve springs

The gazetteer does not directly explain the name. An encyclopedia entry and a local forum post give two explanations: the well originally had twelve spring eyes from which the water rose in turn through the twelve double-hours, whence Fenjin Well; or the spring eyes were set facing the twelve directions, dividing the metal and establishing the bearings, whence the same name. Both connect the phrase "fenjin" with the number twelve, one by time (the twelve double-hours), the other by direction (the twelve earthly branches).

This saying appears only in the two weak sources. The source from which it originally derives has not been traced. The encyclopedia entry quotes the Lishui County Gazetteer for "the old well had twelve openings, yielding water according to the twelve hours", but the Baishiguan entry read in the Kangxi gazetteer contains no such sentence, and the text of the Qianlong gazetteer has not yet been read for this site; the source of that quotation therefore remains to be found, and it is given here as a saying and not as a settled fact.

The two sources also differ on the relation between well and spring. One holds that "Jinjing" and "yongquan" are two names for one thing, the well in the square pool; the other treats the well and the spring as two separate features. The Kangxi gazetteer records only one well, and the saying of spring eyes is a later explanation. This entry follows the gazetteer and writes of a single well, without setting up "yongquan" as a second feature.

Relation to Li Bai's poem

Li Bai wrote a poem called "Fenjin Well", whose text is the same in the gazetteer and in later reporting: "From the white stone the fenjin well is divided, cinnabar spreads over the jade fields. Men ancient and modern grow old, a sliver of moon sinks below the long river." The gazetteer quotes these lines under the Baishiguan entry precisely to identify this well — a way of fixing a name that the gazetteer itself uses.

Reporting also states that Li Bai, having been condemned after the defeat of Yong Wang Li Lin, was exiled to Yelang and, pardoned on the way, came again to Lishui and visited this well (Weilihui, 2022). That account of his life belongs to popular narrative, comes from a local publicity piece and cites no document. This entry records only the verifiable fact that Li Bai wrote a poem about the well, and does not adopt the biographical account.

Place in the Qing-period eight views

Jinjing Spring is counted among the "eight views of Zhongshan" of Qing-period Lishui. According to a 2025 article in Jinling Baijia, Lishui has been known as Zhongshan since Tang times, so the eight views of the Qing period are also called the "eight views of Zhongshan"; one of the eight is "Jinjing Spring", also called Fenjin Well, and it is the only one of the eight whose subject is a well. The public notice of the first batch of Lishui district place-name cultural heritage (27 June 2022) lists Baishiguan Village among the three place names proposed for Jingqiao Town, which agrees with where the well stands.

This site has not yet read the text of the Qianlong Lishui County Gazetteer; according to its bibliographic description, that edition historically included paintings and poems of the "eight views of Zhongshan". The original title and the painting of "Jinjing Spring" as one of the eight are therefore not written up here on the strength of a bibliographic record.

Present state

According to a 2025 field account in Jinling Baijia, the spring of more than seven chi in circumference once described has not survived; the Fenjin Well that now stands is beside a shrimp pond and is an ordinary-sized well, its kerb repaired in cement, with a well pavilion built to protect it and a heritage marker stone set up beside it. A 2018 forum post records much the same, adding that the kerb is ringed in red brick and cement and that two spring eyes still well up beside it. Both accounts are given.

The forum post further records that the ancient Fenjin Well lay about fifty metres north-west of Baishiguan, that the well sat on a mound three or four chi high, that the bottom was of stone, that the wall was covered in green moss with water plants growing in it, and that the silt was black as ink; in flood time the water did not overflow and in drought it never dried. These are a reader's observations on the spot, from a weak source. The precise position of the well has not been verified in the field, so this entry gives no coordinates.

Uncertainties

First, the irrigated area differs between sources. The Kangxi gazetteer says "the fields can be seven mu"; the forum post says about ten mu of rich land surrounds the well. The two figures differ by three mu, no third source has been found, and neither an average nor a conversion is made — both are given.

Second, the personal name differs in writing. The Kangxi gazetteer records that the precinct "was rebuilt by a man of the county, Chen Hui", the character being one meaning wisdom, while the entry for Baishiguan in juan twenty, "record of Daoists and Buddhists", of the Guangxu Lishui County Gazetteer gives "rebuilt by a man of the county, Chen Hui" with a different character. The two gazetteers record the same item; the surname is the same but the given name is written differently. This may be one man or two, no corroboration has been found, and the two are not merged.

Third, the present well differs greatly from the gazetteer's description. The pool well three or four chi deep irrigating seven mu of fields in the Kangxi gazetteer had, by the 2025 account, become an ordinary well beside a shrimp pond with a cement kerb. The two are two stages — historical and present — of the same place; the present must not be used to negate the gazetteer, nor the gazetteer used to describe the present.

Fourth, the saying that this is a warm spring and that its black silt cures skin disease is not accepted. Both the encyclopedia entry and the forum post describe the well as a thermal spring with a year-round temperature of about 25 degrees Celsius, and the latter describes the black silt as a cure. Neither has corroboration; these are hearsay and old lore, and are not written here as fact.

Fifth, no source gives a specific Qing date of construction. The district heritage list records the period as Qing and this entry reproduces it; neither gazetteer gives the year in which Chen rebuilt the precinct, no other material has been found, and no year is written.

Sixth, the Bian He jade legend is treated only as legend. The gazetteer expressly says "traditionally the place where Bian He obtained jade", which is legend and not history. The Bian He story is separately attested as a tradition current in the Lishui area, but it has no direct bearing on the construction history of this well and is not run into it here.