Gāoyáng

Gaoyang in the Baoding region was the home of Sun Chengzong, a prominent minister and military organizer of the late Ming. His connection with the county extended beyond family origins. He compiled a fourteen-volume county gazetteer, completed in 1624 and printed around the end of that year and the beginning of the next. Later additions were printed during the Chongzhen reign.

The gazetteer drew on both local investigations and earlier written works. It recorded the county's environment and social conditions, especially those of the Wanli period, preserving information about local communities, administration and historical sites. Sun himself returned home after retiring in 1631. When Qing troops attacked Gaoyang in 1638, he and his family took part in its defense; after the town fell, he died by suicide. The county's late Ming history thus joins the preservation of local knowledge with the violence of the dynasty's final decades.