Hénèi

Henei was the county at present-day Qinyang in northern Henan, south of the Taihang Mountains. It served as the seat of Huaiqing Route from 1319 and of Huaiqing prefecture after the Ming reorganisation of 1368. The Qing retained this arrangement, placing county and prefectural administration together in the same city.

The town's position connected the Henan plain with routes into southeastern Shanxi. Its historic layout combined gates, princely and administrative compounds, shops, canals and linked ponds. The water system was important both to urban life and to managing drainage in a city close to the Qin River. Trade gave another purpose to these connections: Huaiqing merchants dealt in the region's celebrated medicinal products, including Chinese yam, rehmannia, achyranthes and chrysanthemum. Henei's early modern history consequently belongs to a particular administrative and commercial centre, where official government, river management and exchange across the Taihang approaches met within the same walled town.