Níngyuǎn

Níngyuǎn was the county town beside the seat of Yázhōu, on the far southern shore of Hainan, the place the Tang and Song courts used to send officials they wished to put as far from the capital as the empire allowed. The Tang minister Lǐ Déyú died here in exile around 850, and under the Song the statesmen Lú Duōxùn, Hú Quán and Zhào Dǐng were all banished to this coast; Zhào Dǐng starved himself to death at Jíyáng in 1147. Beyond the town walls lived the Hlai, who grew cotton and wove the patterned blankets sold as Yazhou quilts.

One woman carried that craft north. Huáng Dàopó of Sōngjiāng, stranded in her youth at Yázhōu, learned Hlai spinning and weaving and came home on a trading ship in the Yuanzhen years (1295–96), where she taught the women of Wūnijīng to card, spin and weave cotton. The Song reduced Jíyáng Military Prefecture to Níngyuǎn County for a time before restoring it. The Ming made it Yázhōu, and in 1439 Níngyuǎn County was folded into the zhou, its households placed directly under the prefectural government.