Xīnyù

Xinyu lies on the Yuan River in central Jiangxi, amid a country of fields, kilns and ironworks. A Ming county gazetteer recorded more than fifty porcelain kilns and twenty-three iron workshops in the Wanli reign. The river connected their products to the Gan and the wider waterways of Jiangxi.

In the 1630s the scholar Song Yingxing served as an instructor in Xinyu. There he wrote The Exploitation of the Works of Nature, first printed in 1637. Illustrated accounts of farming, weaving, mining and other crafts brought together knowledge of the work that sustained the empire. Its attention to practical techniques made the book an unusually rich record of the skills of farmers and artisans.