Péngshuǐ

Pengshui lies in the mountains of the lower Wu River, where narrow gorges and steep terraces divide the Tujia and Miao villages. The Tang made it the seat of Qiánzhōu, the governing city of the south-eastern frontier; in 1095 the Song poet Huáng Tíngjiān was exiled to Qiánzhōu and lived there until 1098. Under the Song, Qiánzhōu was raised in 1228 to Shàoqìng Prefecture, with dozens of loose-rein prefectures under its authority, and the Yuan kept Pengshui as the seat of a pacification commission over the border country.

Salt made the district rich. At Yùshān in its hinterland, brine springs sustained a long tradition of boiling salt, drawing workers and merchants into the valleys, and the furnaces, brine pools and wooden pipes left traces of the labour. According to the Sichuan gazetteer, Yushan produced 2,268 shi of salt a year in the Hongwu reign and 7,320 in the Hongzhi reign, and the Qing figure reached 100,000 dan in 1815. The Ming gave up the prefecture in 1371; in 1734 the Qing replaced the native chiefs with salaried officials and set up a civil and military subprefecture at Yushan.