Wǔlíng

Wuling is the county town of Changde, standing on the Yuan River where the mountains of western Hunan open onto the plain west of Dongting Lake. Its walls are traced back to 277 BC, when Zhang Ruo, governor of Shu for Qin, seized the lands south of the Yangtze and built a city east of the present district. The Han made it the seat of Wuling Commandery, and the Sui and Tang knew it as Langzhou.

In 1117 the Song set up the Changde military prefecture, taking the word from a line of the Book of Songs, and about 1165 it became a prefecture. The Yuan made it Changde Circuit, and the Ming and Qing kept Wuling as the seat of Changde Prefecture under Huguang and later Hunan. From here officials governed the counties along the Yuan and the lake country to the west, and the town was called the throat of Guizhou and Sichuan and the lips and teeth of western Chu, a gateway to the southwestern uplands. In 1376 the Ming also placed Lizhou and its counties under Changde, pushing the prefecture's reach northwards.