Jìyuán

Jiyuan lay north of the Yellow River, where the Wangwu and Taihang foothills meet the cultivated plain of Huaiqing. The name means 'source of the Ji', the river that was counted among the four great waterways honoured in imperial ritual, and local tradition made nearby Wangwu Mountain the home of Yugong, the old man who moved mountains. At the springs stood the Jidu Temple, founded under the Sui in 582; in 796 the Tang added a shrine to the Northern Sea, so that the temple honoured both the Ji River and the sea god.

In 1234 the Yuan briefly made Jiyuan the department of Yuanzhou, and the county was restored the next year. The Ming and Qing kept the Jidu Temple in repair: an edict of the Hongwu Emperor preserved there stripped the mountain and river gods of their accumulated titles in favour of their plain names. Waterworks mattered as much as shrines. At Wulongkou, Ming inscriptions record the opening of the irrigation headworks, and Qing steles record the repair of the canals that watered the fields below the mountains.