Guāngshān

Guangshan lay in southeastern Henan, among hills and tributaries draining toward the Huai. Its county gazetteer records changing administrative ties in the early Ming: assignment to Fengyang in 1371 was followed by a return to Runing in 1381. The same work describes a landscape of ponds, weirs and fortified refuges, where local government had to balance cultivation with defence. Qiangong Weir, running around the county town, irrigated several thousand mu of fields. Officials built stone works and assigned residents to guard them, but maintenance repeatedly failed. The gazetteer's author explained the underlying conflict: when spring water threatened neighbouring properties, powerful residents privately breached the works to drain their own land, damaging the water supply on which many other households depended. Repairs therefore involved more than masonry. They required enforcing a shared interest against individual advantage. Such records place Guangshan's history in the practical politics of water, fields and county authority, alongside its position near routes between the Huai basin and central China.