Shànghǎi

Shanghai became a county under Songjiang Prefecture in 1292, with its seat beside the Huangpu River. By the middle of the sixteenth century, cotton textiles had made the town part of one of China's busiest manufacturing districts. Its waterfront on the Huangpu linked these workshops and the surrounding countryside with coastal shipping, joining the river traffic of Jiangnan to the sea. Prosperity also exposed the county town to attack: repeated pirate raids prompted the construction of a defensive wall in 1553.

The wall acquired a religious life of its own. During the Wanli reign, a shrine to Guan Yu was built on a gate platform; in 1815 the Dajing platform received a three-storey temple pavilion. An inscribed stone gateway added in 1836 gave the complex its name, Dajing, or 'Great Prospect'. Meanwhile the establishment of a customs office in 1685 strengthened Shanghai's role in regulated maritime commerce. Inside the walls, the official Pān Yǔnduān began laying out the Yù Garden in 1559.