Wúxī

Wuxi lies between Lake Tai and the Yangtze, a market town on the Grand Canal amid the rice fields and waterways of Jiangnan. Under the Song, merchants from every quarter hauled their goods to its fairs, which ran for more than a month, and when the Yuan raised it to a prefecture in 1295 it was counted the foremost town of western Zhe. Its name means 'without tin', though Wang Mang once briefly renamed it Youxi, 'having tin'.

In 1604 Gu Xiancheng and Gao Panlong, both dismissed from office, rebuilt the Donglin Academy where the Song thinker Yang Shi had once taught. Its lectures drew hundreds, a couplet in its hall bade scholars care for 'the affairs of family, state and realm', and their outspoken judgement of officials earned them the name of the Donglin party. In 1626, with orders out for his arrest, Gao Panlong drowned himself in a pond, and the eunuch Wei Zhongxian had the academy torn down; it rose again once the Chongzhen Emperor lifted the ban.