Wǔchāng

Wǔchāng county lay on the southern bank of the Yangtze, a country of lakes and rice fields across the river from Huángzhōu. It kept the name Sūn Quán gave the old town of È in 221, when he made it his capital, 'to prosper through arms'. Its fishermen worked the eddies at Fánkǒu, where the Fán River brings the waters of Liángzi Lake into the Yangtze, and the county gazetteer ranked the bream caught there first under heaven.

In 1080 Sū Shì, banished to Huángzhōu, often crossed to the West Hill of Wǔchāng and there rebuilt a ruined pavilion dating from Sūn Quán's time; his brother Sū Zhé wrote its record. Under the Yuán and Míng the county answered to Wǔchāng Route and then Wǔchāng Prefecture, whose seat lay upriver at Jiāngxià, so that one name came to mean two places.