Yuánlíng

Yuanling stands on the middle Yuan River in western Hunan, where the Youshui joins the main stream and the hills of the Five Streams peoples press down to the water. A county of this name existed under the Qin and Han, and in 187 BC the Han court made Wu Yang the Marquis of Yuanling; the lavishly furnished tomb of the marquis family at Huxishan has yielded the oldest known Western Han recipe text and a census register. In the Southern Dynasties the town became the seat of a commandery, and from 589 it was the seat of Chenzhou, a post it held for well over a thousand years.

Under the Yuan, Yuanling was the capital of Chenzhou Circuit within the Huguang Branch Secretariat. In 1364 the circuit became Chenzhou Prefecture, still governed from Yuanling, and the Ming kept the prefecture under the Huguang provincial administration. The Qing retained it, attaching it to the Chen-Yuan-Yong-Jing circuit, and the new province of Hunan took it over in 1664. As the largest county in Hunan and a river port on the water route into Guizhou, Yuanling was the chief town of the Yuan valley.