Yángzhōu

Yangzhou, written with a different first character from the canal city of the same name in Jiangsu, lay in the Han River country of southern Shaanxi. Its seat had moved to Xingdao, the site of the later Yang County, in 756. By the Yuan period it belonged to the Xingyuan circuit, with neighbouring districts brought under its administration. The river valley and the mountains around Hanzhong gave the place a role in communications between the basin and the lands beyond.

In the early Ming the prefecture was reduced to Yang County under Hanzhong, and several former districts were absorbed into it. A local gazetteer preserves notices of floods on the Han River, including an inundation in the Yongle reign that damaged the town and its dwellings. Its account also records the turmoil of Wu Sangui's rebellion: forces occupying the county in the 1670s extracted supplies and cut timber before Qing armies recovered the district. Such records show how a county seat on the Han River experienced both the routine burdens of administration and the upheavals of wider wars.