Jiāngdū

Jiāngdū was the county that held the walled city of Yángzhōu, where the Grand Canal meets the Yangtze; its old name Lóngchuān and its county name both recall the waters of the Jiāng and Huái gathering here. In the Míng and Qīng the city became the clearing house of the Liǎnghuái salt monopoly. Grain barges bound for Beijing passed through on the canal, the salt commissioner's office stood inside the walls, and Huīzhōu merchants laid out gardens around the Slender West Lake and in the new city at Nánhéxià. On 20 May 1645 Qīng troops under Duōduó stormed Yángzhōu, where Shǐ Kěfǎ had held out for the Southern Míng, and the slaughter called the Ten Days of Yángzhōu followed. Wáng Xiùchǔ, who lived through it, wrote the account that gave the massacre its name.

The wealth soon returned. The Kāngxī and Qiánlóng emperors stopped at Yángzhōu on their southern tours, and the salt merchants vied to receive them. In 1705 the salt censor Cáo Yín set up a printing office in the city that cut the Complete Tang Poems, and in the eighteenth century painters such as Jīn Nóng and Zhèng Xiè, later called the Eight Eccentrics of Yángzhōu, found their patrons among the salt merchants.