Wanli Chronicle

In the 16th-century global trade network, the Jiulong River was the “capillary” connecting the Ming Empire to global silver flows. After analyzing 16 historical sources including the Wanli Zhangzhou Prefecture Chronicle and Zhangzhou Agricultural Reclamation Chronicle, I discovered that Zhangzhou’s water system was not merely a natural river network—it was a sophisticated “hydraulic machine” composed of natural channels, artificial dikes, and monolithic stone bridges. From the original waterways of 1381 to the crisscrossing dike-fields and stone bridges of the late Wanli era, this system transformed from a “natural landscape” into a “global logistics platform.” ...

In Southern Fujian, the earth has not always been a silent foundation. Zhangzhou — an ancient city famed for the prosperity of Moon Harbor — was repeatedly shaken by tremors deep within the crust. In 1445, the earliest documented earthquake struck the prefectural city. In 1591, city walls collapsed and the earth split open. In 1604, a magnitude 8.0 quake off the coast of Quanzhou rocked the entire region. I opened the Wanli Zhangzhou Prefecture Chronicle and the Zhangzhou Seismological Chronicle. In the volume on “Portents and Disasters,” I saw how our ancestors captured the “turning of the Earth Dragon” with cold, precise numbers. ...

Have you ever wondered how a tidal flat, submerged by seawater for millennia, could be turned into fertile farmland that sustains thousands? This is not a myth. This is what the people of 16th-century Zhangzhou actually did. In the late Ming period, the people of Southern Fujian faced a brutal choice: inland lay endless dense mountain forests, every inch of which had already been claimed by clan lineages. Offshore lay the roaring tidal flats, submerged twice daily by the ebb and flow, offering vast stretches of unclaimed mud. ...