Yíbīn

Yibin, the seat of Xuzhou, stands at the meeting of the Min and Jinsha rivers, where their combined waters flow east as the Yangtze. The confluence placed the city at the head of a great waterway and at the junction of routes into southern Sichuan and Yunnan. Boats arriving from different valleys brought goods to its riverfront markets. In the eighteenth century, merchants increasingly used the city as a centre for exchange between Sichuan and Yunnan. The Min linked it with the Chengdu plain, while the Jinsha came down from the southwest. Its position between these waterways and the mountain roads helped make Xuzhou an important trading centre in the Qing period.