Jiangxi

Fengtian Ancient Town: The Mercantile World by the Lushui River since Geographic Links Lushui River, Anfu County, Fengtian Town (Fengtian People’s Commune), Pingdu Town, Ji’an County, Wugong Mountain, Menggang Ridge, Huangniu Ridge, Guishan Mountain, Dongyang Peak, Baima Peak, Shiwu Cave, Biyun Cave, Bijiashan, Zengshishan, Furong Peak, Xiadian Village, Guanbu Village, Dengjia Village, Wutong Village, Meitian Village, Songtian Village, Nanling Village, Damenqian Village, Dafen Village, Chetian Village, Shuixi Village, Mianzhou Village. ...

You probably do not know this, but in Jinxian County, Jiangxi, there is a small town called Lidu. Any random jar of white liquor pulled from its shelves can be traced back, year by year, for more than seven hundred years. I want to be honest with you about how I ended up writing this piece. I was working through a stack of county annals from Jiangxi, the kind of municipal-level zhì volumes that nobody outside a handful of historians and a few stubborn local writers ever reads. Most of them are dense, repetitive, and frankly a little boring. They list officials, list flood years, list tax reforms, list which magistrate repaired which bridge in which year of which reign. I was skimming fast, looking for something unusual. And then I hit the Lidu section. ...

Xie Jin (1369—1415), styled Dashen, art-name Chunyu, was born in Jishui County, Jiangxi Province—a region known as the “Land of Literary Integrity and Righteousness” (文章节义之邦), which produced 552 jinshi (进士, successful candidates in the highest imperial examinations) and 6 zhuangyuan (状元, top scorers) from the Tang to Qing dynasties [1]. Coming from a distinguished Jishui family—his father Xie Kai (解开, 1312—1398) served as a county school official and authored the 40-volume Shu Jie Wen Ji [4]—Xie Jin displayed extraordinary talent from childhood. At 5 he could recite texts after a single reading; at 7 he composed poetry already with “old composure” (老成语); at 10 he memorized thousands of words daily and retained them for life; and at 13 he had mastered the Four Books and the entire Confucian canon [2]. ...