Mǐnxiàn

Mǐn County, named in 592 when Yuánfēng County was renamed, was one of the two counties that divided the walled capital of Fúzhōu on the lower Mǐn River. Under the Yuán the city was a route seat, and visitors such as Marco Polo, who called it Fugiu, and Odoric of Pordenone, who remembered its enormous chickens, passed through. Chén Yǒudìng, a Fúqīng man risen from soldier to governor of Fújiàn, held the province for the Yuán until the armies of Zhū Yuánzhāng defeated him in 1368 and sent him to Nánjīng, where he was executed.

The Míng made Fúzhōu a provincial capital and rebuilt its walls in 1371. In 1392 thirty-six Fújiàn families began to settle in the Ryukyu Kingdom, and Zhèng Hé's fleets gathered at Tàipíng harbor near Chánglè before crossing to the Indian Ocean. The maritime trade office moved to Fúzhōu in 1474, and the Róuyuǎn Post Station housed Ryukyuan envoys and merchants. Japanese pirates struck the prefecture hard under the Jiājìng emperor until Qī Jìguāng campaigned in Fújiàn. In the Qīng, Gěng Jīngzhōng's revolt of 1674–1676 and the coastal evacuation that lasted until 1684 disrupted the city before its Ryukyu and Japan trade recovered.