Guǎngdé

Guǎngdé lay in the hills at the edge of Jiāngnán, where Zhèjiāng, Jiāngsū and Ānhuī meet. The Yuán raised its military district to Guǎngdé Route in 1277. In June 1356 Zhū Yuánzhāng took the area, began building a city wall and renamed it Guǎngxìng Prefecture, with Guǎngdé County becoming Guǎngyáng. In 1368 it was Guǎngdé Prefecture again, in 1371 a department directly under the Nánjīng court, and in 1380 Guǎngyáng County was folded into the department, leaving Jiànpíng as its county. The Qīng made it a directly administered department under Ānhuī in 1667.

Its great shrine on Cí Mountain honored Zhāng Bó, a hero said to have controlled floods, and Huīzhōu merchants brought ancestral halls, memorial arches and genealogies into the district in the Míng and Qīng.