Yùnchéng

Yùnchéng takes its name from a walled town the state of Lu raised for its defence in 587 BC; the Sui named the county in 598. It stands on the low plain of southwestern Shandong, where the Yellow River breached its banks again and again and left much of the county under water, so that the farmers of the district came to know flood as a recurrent fact of life. Yún Bànxià, a medicinal plant grown here, was famous across China.

Yuncheng is also the home ground of the Water Margin legend. In the story Song Jiang is a clerk in the Yuncheng yamen, and the outlaws of Liangshan marsh gather nearby; the tales grew in Yuan plays and in the Ming novel. In 1385 the county belonged to Jining Department under Yanzhou Prefecture, and in 1735 the Qing placed it under the new Caozhou Prefecture. The Ming gazetteer of 1540 survives only in part, and the county's history was written again in 1634 under the Chongzhen emperor.