Jīntáng

Jintang lay northeast of Chengdu, where the rivers of the western Sichuan plain converged before passing through Jintang Gorge toward the Tuo River country. Its medieval and early modern county seat was at Chengxiang, west of the later centre at Zhaozhen. The river junction and the narrow gorge made navigation and the management of water central to the locality's geographical position.

Under the Yuan, Huaizhou was merged into Jintang County in 1283, and the enlarged county belonged to Chengdu's administration. Ming Yuzhen's forces took the district in 1357; it subsequently formed part of his Xia regime before the Ming conquest of Sichuan in 1371. The Ming abolished Jintang into Xindu in 1377 but restored the county in 1380, retaining Chengxiang as its seat. During the seventeenth-century wars the district passed through Zhang Xianzhong's control and then into Qing rule. Under the Qing it remained subordinate to Chengdu Prefecture. Jintang's historical identity therefore combines a long-lived county institution with a river gateway at the edge of the Chengdu plain, rather than only the later urban settlement around Zhaozhen.