Shiqiu Subdistrict

Overview

Shiqiu Subdistrict lies in the west of Lishui District. Its profile page gives the area as 116.5 sq km, with 14 villages and communities, of which 8 are villages and 6 communities, a resident population of 73,000 and a registered population of 51,000. Two universities stand within it, Jiangsu Second Normal University and the Pujiang College of Nanjing Tech University.

Its statistical division code is 320117004, as recorded by the Department of Civil Affairs of Jiangsu Province in its table of county-level and below changes for 2018.

The full list of villages and communities is reproduced as the district government's administrative divisions page gives it:

• 6 residents' committees: Shiqiu, Tangdou Village, Mingjue, Guangming, Xietang, Shedong.
• 8 villagers' committees: Dongquan, Xiangyang, Sanxing, Tongxin, Sangyuanpu (桑元蒲), Hengshan, Jiutang, Shangfang.

Tangdou Village ends in the character for "village" yet is listed as a residents' committee; the suffix does not match the tier. The official wording is kept here and the suffix is not regularised.

Administrative history

In May 2018 the provincial government approved the abolition of Shiqiu Town and the establishment of Shiqiu Subdistrict; the approval was issued on 15 May 2018.

Origin of the name

An introduction published in September 2025 in the Shiqiu Subdistrict column of the district government website records that the subdistrict takes its name from Shiqiu Dam, built in the Wanli era of the Ming. The name Shiqiu Dam also appears in the row for Shiqiu Subdistrict in the district civil affairs bureau's place-name cultural heritage public notice. The two corroborate each other, and it follows that the name Shiqu derives from the dam.

That column is promotional writing, and its account reaches only to the level of the subdistrict without naming any particular community, so it cannot be used to account for the origin or customs of an individual community. The form, position and present condition of Shiqiu Dam itself are not recorded in the sources used here.

Two sets of figures for area and jurisdiction

• Area: 116.47 sq km on the administrative divisions page; "116.5 sq km" on the profile page, a rounded form.
• Jurisdiction: 6 residents' committees and 8 villagers' committees on the administrative divisions page; "14 villages and communities" in the profile page's combined wording.

The two add up to the same 14. The entry fields follow the itemised version.

Shiqiu Subdistrict in the place-name cultural heritage public notices

The first batch of place-name cultural heritage public notices of the Department of Civil Affairs of Lishui District, posted on 27 June 2022 with a comment period to 1 July 2022, gives three place names in the row for Shiqiu Subdistrict: Mingjue, Shiqiu Dam and Sangyuanpu.

That document is a public notice of proposed entries, not a formally published list, so this entry records them only as proposed for inclusion and does not state that they have been entered on the Lishui District list of place-name cultural heritage. The list gives only names and their attribution to the subdistrict, with no origin, date or protected status.

Sangyuanpu or Sangyuanpu Village: two forms of the name

A difference in the writing of one name in the list of villages under this subdistrict is held in parallel here, without adjudicating which form is correct:

• The district government's administrative divisions page writes Sangyuanpu (桑元蒲), as one of the villagers' committees.
• The civil affairs bureau's place-name cultural heritage public notice writes Sangyuanpu Village (桑园蒲).
• The Lishui Release report on dragon lanterns of January 2025 also writes Sangyuanpu Village (桑园蒲), recording four dragon lanterns there, played in the carried-dragon manner.

The two forms differ in one character, yuan written with the element for "garden" in the one and with that for "head" in the other; since romanisation alone cannot show the difference, the Chinese forms are given beside them. Neither source states whether the two forms denote the same administrative entity. This library does not simply treat them as one entry and erase the variant, nor does it decide which form is the correct one; each is reproduced as its source gives it.

Dragon lantern customs

Shiqiu Subdistrict is held to be a home of dragon lanterns. The Shiqiu Subdistrict column of the district government website records that the villages and communities of the subdistrict retain more than 30 dragon lanterns, of kinds including flowing dragon, board dragon and carried dragon. A Lishui Release report of January 2025 states that thirty great dragons took turns performing at Shiqiu during the Spring Festival of 2025, and records the Zhang family dragon lantern at Xiangyang Village, the Lu family great dragon as a board dragon, and four dragon lanterns at Sangyuanpu Village played in the carried-dragon manner.

Two points need noting. First, the classification of dragon lantern forms given above comes from a media account summarising the local lanterns and is not a formal scholarly classification; this entry names the source when using it. Second, expressions in the report such as "the mightiest great dragon south of the Yangtze" and "the only dragon with black scale markings" are promotional statements, to be quoted as such and not rewritten as objective conclusions.

A report of 2024 contributed by the Shiqiu Subdistrict Office records that Mazhuang, in Xietang community, held five days of dragon lantern dancing from 14 to 18 February 2024, and that the Mazhuang dragon lantern has 18 sections and is about 30 metres long. The sentence in that report calling dragon lantern dancing a national-level intangible cultural heritage refers to dragon lantern dancing as a category in general; it may not be used to make the Mazhuang dragon lantern a national-level item. Mazhuang dragon lantern, the fishing song and the Shangfang sweet potato vermicelli craft have entries of their own, which are not duplicated here.

Points of doubt

• Resident and registered populations appear only on the profile page, which carries no reference date.
• The date of the building of Shiqiu Dam rests only on the phrase "in the Wanli era of the Ming" in the column article; no earlier exact year or record of the works was found, and its present condition has not been verified.
• Whether Sangyuanpu and Sangyuanpu Village are the same entity is not stated by either source; see the section above.
• The Shiqiu Subdistrict column is promotional material. Its accounts of scenery, customs and figures, such as the ancient ginkgo at Shangfang, the length of the Shijiu Lake bridge and the Xiheng Mountain watershed, reach only to the level of the subdistrict; figures for the length of a bridge, the area of a lake and the height of a hill must not be interchanged or substituted for one another.