Zhènfān

Zhènfān occupies an oasis on the lower Shiyang River, north of Liángzhōu, with the Tengger and Badain Jaran deserts pressing on its eastern, western and northern edges. People had lived by the river for some 2,800 years, leaving the Shājǐng culture. The Ming founded Línhé Garrison in the Hongwu reign and Zhènfān Garrison in 1396, bringing military settlers to cultivate land watered by the river, with Mongol pastoralists beyond the northern sand. The Qing replaced the garrison with a county in 1724, and further settlement enlarged the cultivated area. In this dry basin, the distribution of canal water was a constant concern among the villages whose fields depended on it.