Huīxiàn

Huixian lies at the eastern foot of the Taihang Mountains in northern Henan, where the plain of Weihui meets the road up into Shanxi. The old county was Gong, a state of the Western Zhou, and in 1216 the Jin made it Huizhou, naming it for the Qinghui Hall built beside the springs under Sumen Mountain. Tradition holds that the Book of Songs verse about the bubbling spring that flows into the Qi was sung of these springs, the Baiquan.

Early in the Hongwu reign the Ming reduced Huizhou to a county under Weihui Prefecture. The springs drew scholars through the dynasties: Shao Yong studied the Book of Changes here in the Northern Song, and the statesman Yelü Chucai spent his last years here in the early Yuan. Under the Ming the thinker Li Zhi served as school instructor at Gongcheng, the old name of the county, and at the turn of the Qing the Confucian Sun Qifeng retired here to teach.