Yīngdé

Yingde lies on the Bei River amid the hills of northern Guangdong. The name dates to 1195, when the Southern Song raised Yingzhou to the prefecture of Yingde. Under the Yuan it became a circuit and then a smaller prefecture, absorbing the counties of Zhenyang and Hanguang in 1314. The Ming made Yingde a county in 1369. Parts of its extensive territory were later separated to form Changning County in 1569 and, together with land from Qingyuan, Fogang subprefecture in 1813.