Fūchéng

Fucheng was an old settlement southeast of Luochuan in the loess country of northern Shaanxi. Its earlier county jurisdiction had already ended by 1337: in 1267 the Yuan reduced Fucheng to a town and incorporated its territory into Luochuan. Ming geographical writing consequently listed it among former county seats rather than as a functioning independent county.

The locality nevertheless remained within a landscape of cultivation, villages and minor administrative posts. The Luochuan gazetteer records a Fucheng inspector among the county's Ming officials. Its collected writing also preserves a poem on the local wheat harvest, describing autumn sowing, summer ripening, sickles and donkeys carrying the crop. Such evidence gives the place a more specific history than a general account of the Wei valley. Fucheng's significance in the Ming and Qing lay in the persistence of an older named settlement within Luochuan's jurisdiction, amid the ridges and valleys of the Luo River country.