Jingqiao Town

Overview

Jingqiao Town lies in the south of Lishui District and is one of the district's three towns. The administrative divisions page gives its area as 134.52 sq km, with 5 residents' committees and 7 villagers' committees; its seat is at Xinqiao residents' committee. The town profile page of the district government records that the town lies west of Shijiu Lake; that page gives only the positional relation, not the length of shoreline or the area of lake water within the town.

The full list of villages and communities is reproduced as the official table gives it:

• 5 residents' committees: Taocun, Hangcun, Xinqiao, Fengxiangling, Ruijia.
• 7 villagers' committees: Shuijing, Dacun, Zhishan, Yunheshan, Kongjia, Xiantan, Taicun.

Where the suffix and the tier do not agree, the official wording is kept and the suffix is not regularised: Taocun and Hangcun end in the character for "village" yet are listed as residents' committees, while Ruijia carries no suffix at all yet is listed as a residents' committee.

Administrative history

Jingqiao Town is not named in any approval abolishing a town in favour of a subdistrict: the approval of July 2015 concerned only Yongyang and Zhetang, and that of May 2018 only Dongping, Honglan and Shiqiu. At the date of the sources held here, Jingqiao remains a town.

Traditional villages within the town

• Shishanxia, in Ruijia Village, in the first batch of traditional villages of Jiangsu (2020).
• Tai Village, in the sixth batch of traditional villages of Jiangsu. The reply of November 2023 from the district culture and tourism bureau records that "Tai Village in Jingqiao, Luoshan in Hefeng, Yangjia Village in Sunjiaxiang and two others, five villages in all, entered the sixth batch of the traditional village list of Jiangsu". This entry rests on that reply's working account.

The histories, buildings and customs of those two villages have entries of their own, which are not duplicated here.

Jingqiao Town in the place-name cultural heritage public notices

A number of place names are listed under Jingqiao Town in the two batches of place-name cultural heritage public notices held by this library. Both documents are public notices seeking comment, not formally published lists, so this entry records them only as proposed for inclusion and does not state that they have been entered on a list.

The first batch, posted on 27 June 2022 with a comment period to 1 July 2022, gives three names under Jingqiao Town: Zhishan, Xiantan Township and Baishiguan Village.

The fifth batch, posted on 3 June 2026 in the category of memorial facilities, 25 items in all, gives twelve names under Jingqiao Town: the Dongliu New Fourth Army Unknown Martyrs' Cemetery, the Dongliu battle site, the Gandai New Fourth Army Unknown Martyrs' Cemetery, the site group of the Anti-Japanese University Ninth Branch, the Lijiashan martyrs' cemetery, the Liu family ancestral hall, the Tongshan memorial square, the Tu family ancestral hall, the Xiantan New Fourth Army Anti-Japanese Martyrs' Cemetery, the Xinqiao rendezvous site, the Xinqiao battle site and the Yuecheng site.

Two points need noting. First, the two notices give only the names and their attribution to the town; they record no origin, date, form or protected status for the individual names, so no history is written here on their authority. Second, the Yuecheng site of the fifth batch is attached to Jingqiao Town without a village being named, and neither document states whether it is the same place as the Yuecheng of the Tai Village area; the two are held in parallel as doubtful and not merged.

Xiantan is itself a place name proposed for inclusion in the first batch, while the origin of the name is a matter of local history; the two belong to different layers and are not treated as one thing.

Clues to the origin of the name Xiantan

A report of Xinhua Daily Media Group of 26 May 2024, contributed by the Lishui District Local Gazetteer Office, states that Xiantan Village lies in the southeastern part of Jingqiao Town and that Xiantan is the earliest township name of Nanjing Lishui to be recorded in writing: an altar was established there in the Yonghui era of the Tang, and a township was set up in the Changshou era, taking its name from the altar that preceded it. The report quotes the Xiantan Hill inscription, recording that in the fifth year of Yonghui (689) the Taoist Song Wengan of Xunxian Temple built three altars because the natural shape of the rock resembled one, and that in the first year of Changshou (692) the magistrate Wang Tong opened three townships, so the township was named Xiantan; the report further states that the Tang stele was collected and held by the Nanjing Museum in the 1960s of the twentieth century.

The limits of this library's use of that report are as follows. Though the Local Gazetteer Office contributed it, it remains a media account and not the text of an old gazetteer. The report also relays that the second volume of the Guangxu gazetteer of Lishui, in its section on villages and wards, records the village name Xiantan as belonging to Xiantan Township; that volume has not been read here, so it is not cited as a verbatim old-gazetteer text. That the stele was collected by the Nanjing Museum in the 1960s records the destination of the stele and does not mean that it is now in the Nanjing Museum; whether it was returned to Xunxian Temple, and whether the stone remains there, are both unverified. The report gives the style "Shangxian" for Song Wengan and "Yuanlan" for the magistrate Wang Tong, while other accounts give variant forms, Song Wenhan and Xuanlan; this library holds both and adopts no conclusion. The document may not be used to establish the protection grade or publication batch of Xunxian Temple, which has an entry of its own.

Points of doubt

• The origin of the name Jingqiao is not recorded in the sources held here; a place-name entry awaits a source.
• The formally published document for the sixth batch of traditional villages is not held in this library; the reply names only three villages while giving a total of five, leaving two unnamed.
• The formally published documents for the two batches of place-name cultural heritage are not held here, so the final protected status of each place name under Jingqiao Town remains undetermined.
• The Liu family ancestral hall and the Tu family ancestral hall of the fifth batch are attached to the town without a village being named; neither document states whether the former is the same as the Liu family ancestral hall at Shishanxia, built in 1820 and recorded in the Shishanxia entry. The two are held in parallel as doubtful.