Jìnghǎi

Jìnghǎi lies in the low canal country south of Tianjin, where several rivers meet near the route of the Grand Canal. The Jin set up Jinghai County at the stockade of Woukou in 1193; in 1265 the Yuan merged it into Huichuan, the later Qing County, and afterwards restored it. In the early Ming the name was changed to Jinghai, written with a different first character, and in 1377 the county returned to Hejian Prefecture.

Water shaped both transport and vulnerability. The county gazetteer stressed that prolonged rain turned the lowlands into a wide sheet of floodwater, and the embankments of the southern Grand Canal were divided into sections under local supervision. In 1725 Tianjin was made a department, taking Jinghai from Hejian, and in 1731 it became a prefecture with Jinghai under it.