Huátíng

Huátíng, the county seat of Sōngjiāng, lay in the water country of Jiāngnán. The Yuán raised it to Huátíng Prefecture in 1277 and renamed it Sōngjiāng the next year; in 1292 the district's eastern townships were split off as Shànghǎi County, and the Huátíng seat remained at Sōngjiāng. For a time Zhāng Shìchéng held the area, then Zhū Yuánzhāng took it.

Cotton made Sōngjiāng rich. Huáng Dàopó, a woman of the village of Wūnìjīng, learned weaving on Hainan and returned home in 1295–1296 to teach local women the tools and patterns for cotton cloth. Sōngjiāng cloth became famous across the Míng empire. Qīngpǔ County was cut from the prefecture in 1542, and under the Qīng its lands were divided into still more counties.