Huìchuān

Huichuan was the county seat of Qingzhou in the North China plain. Its name dates from 1153, when the Jin renamed Qianning County. Under Mongol rule the same seat served Qingning Prefecture from 1230 to 1234 and then Qingzhou again. An administrative consolidation in 1265 briefly absorbed neighbouring jurisdictions into Huichuan before Qingzhou was restored.

In 1337 Huichuan therefore stood within the Yuan administrative landscape of Hejian Route. Its separate county administration ended in 1368, when the new Ming government merged it into Qingzhou. Six years later Qingzhou itself was reduced to Qing County under Hejian Prefecture. The settlement continued as a local government seat through these changes of name and rank. Under the Qing, the county's superior jurisdiction shifted again: in 1725 it was placed under Tianjin Zhou, and in 1731 under Tianjin Prefecture. Huichuan's history is thus embedded in the successive county, prefectural and provincial arrangements through which rulers administered this part of the northern plain.