Liángxiàn

Liang County was the seat of Ruzhou, on the upper Ru River in central Henan, in the hills where the Song Mountains slope down to the plain. The Sui gave the department its name in 606 and placed it at the county town of Liang. The Song made the area famous for the Ru kilns, whose celadon was reserved for the court before the Jurchen wars destroyed them, and the Fengxue Temple, a monastery with the third largest pagoda forest in China, stands in the hills nine kilometres to the northeast.

The Yuan still kept Liang as a county under Ruzhou. Early in the Ming, in the Hongwu years, the county was abolished and its lands merged into the department, and in 1476 Ruzhou was made a directly administered department, the only one in Henan answering straight to the province. Ruzhou thereafter governed its own counties without a prefecture above it.