Zhetang Subdistrict

Overview

Zhetang Subdistrict lies in the north of Lishui District. The district government's "Administrative Divisions" page writes this unit as "Zhetang Subdistrict (Development Zone)", indicating that it shares its administration with the Nanjing Lishui Economic Development Zone; the township profiles column of the same website is likewise headed by the development zone, consistent with that wording.

The "Administrative Divisions" page gives an area of 134.06 square kilometres and 16 residents' committees with no village committees, the only one of the district's eight township units without village committees.

The 16 residents' committees are Tuanshan, Mingzhuqiao, Xin'an, Xinghe, Yanglinqiao, Qianjin, Hehua, Jichang Road, Zhetang, Konggang, Wushan, Qunli, Kangyi, Chongxian, Qinhuai and Shahe, reproduced as given on that page. The page's name column records the short forms of residents' and village committees without the usual suffix of "village" or "community" (such as Tuanshan and Zhetang); this library adds the suffix in entry names following official usage. The government seat column gives Tuanshan Residents' Committee.

That this unit has no village committees is consistent with its having been incorporated wholesale into the development zone: in every source held here the number of village committees for Zhetang Subdistrict is given as zero, and no village name is listed under this unit. The specific reason is noted under Limits below.

Establishment

In July 2015, with the approval of the provincial government, Zhetang Town was abolished and Zhetang Subdistrict was set up over the former town's administrative area. The text of the approval reads:

同意撤销南京市溧水区柘塘镇，以原柘塘镇行政区域设立溧水区柘塘街道办事处，街道办事处驻团山西路8号。

— Su Zheng Fu [2015] No. 69, 2015-07-15

By this text the administrative area of Zhetang Subdistrict is exactly identical to that of the former Zhetang Town: replacing the town with the subdistrict changed the level of the establishment without any adjustment of boundaries. The entry in the district government's chronology, which reads that in July 2015 Yongyang Town and Zhetang Town of Lishui District were abolished and Yongyang Subdistrict and Zhetang Subdistrict were set up respectively, agrees with the approval.

Two statements of the seat need to be distinguished: the approval records the office address as 8 Tuanshan West Road, while the "Administrative Divisions" page records the government seat as the Tuanshan Residents' Committee under it. The first is the office address at the time of the approval and the second is the current general-name column of the district government's divisions page; both point to the same establishment, recorded in different registers.

Monuments within the unit

The Jiangsu provincial list of protected cultural relic sites records "Song Ying tomb, Ming dynasty, Lishui District, Tuanshan Wushan, Zhetang Subdistrict". The tomb has its own entry in this library's history section.

It should be said that the source card held here for that list transcribes only five Lishui rows (Yanzhi River and Tiansheng Bridge, Changle Bridge, Yongshou Temple Pagoda, Song Ying Tomb and the Weijiacun earthen-mound tomb cluster), not the whole table. This entry therefore does not claim that Song Ying Tomb is the only provincially protected site within the unit; among the rows transcribed, Zhetang Subdistrict appears this once.

It follows that Wushan and Tuanshan are place names within the area of Zhetang Subdistrict, and that Tuanshan is at the same time the name of the residents' committee where the subdistrict government is seated. The entry on the Song Ying tomb and this entry corroborate each other on this point.

Place name

The Kangxi gazetteer of Lishui County, in the wells section of its mountains-and-waters treatise, registers wells one by one and records the entry on Chenjia Well:

陳家井北四十五里，柘塘城莊村。嘉靖間壯士陳廷瑄輪汲水器嚇退倭寇一十八人，即此處。

— Kangxi Gazetteer of Lishui County, juan 5, mountains and waters treatise

This record of the early Qing gazetteer supplies two points relevant to this unit: the place name Zhetang already appears in gazetteer records by the early Qing, and the settlement name within it, Chengzhuang, is one of the earliest settlement names of Zhetang held here. The same entry records that in the Jiajing era the warrior Chen Tingxuan drove off eighteen raiding Japanese with his water-drawing vessel, an account of a person's deeds that falls outside the scope of this section.

What the record does not supply must be kept separate: it gives only the settlement name, not the correspondence between that village and the present-day area of Zhetang Subdistrict, and it gives no account of where the name Zhetang came from. The earliest gazetteer attestation of the place name held here is this one; whether an earlier attestation exists is still to be sought.

Relation to the development zone and to planning

The Lishui District Territorial Spatial Master Plan (2021-2035) gives the planning extent as the whole administrative area of Lishui District, listing "Zhetang Subdistrict (Economic Development Zone)" among them, that is, the plan treats the subdistrict and the development zone together.

The same plan also records that the central urban area planning extent mainly covers Yongyang Subdistrict, Zhetang Subdistrict (Economic Development Zone), and parts of Dongping Subdistrict and Honglan Subdistrict, with a total area of 126.2853 square kilometres.

Zhetang Subdistrict is therefore one of the units making up the central urban area planning extent. But "mainly covers" is not inclusion in full: the central urban area totals 126.2853 square kilometres, which is smaller than the 134.06 square kilometres of Zhetang Subdistrict alone and also smaller than the 130.31 square kilometres of Yongyang Subdistrict alone, so it cannot cover both subdistricts entirely and must cover only part of each. The public version of the plan read by this library gives only the extent clause quoted above, with no boundary line for the central urban area, so the specific area of Zhetang Subdistrict falling within it is not inferred here.

Limits

• The area of 134.06 square kilometres comes from the "Administrative Divisions" page. This library holds no separate profile page for this unit, so there is no second source against which to check the area, and no population figure is given.
• The origin of the joint administration with the development zone, and whether the boundaries change with the zone's extent, are not recorded by any source held here. The sources also give no reason for the absence of village committees, and none is inferred here.
• The dates of establishment and the origins of the 16 residents' committees are not recorded by any source held here.
• The origin of the place name Zhetang is not explained by any gazetteer or government source held here.
• The geographical correspondence between the gazetteer's Chengzhuang Village of Zhetang and the present-day administrative area is not recorded; this entry treats the link as a place-name clue only and does not identify the two.
• The provincial list source card transcribes only five Lishui rows, not the whole table, so whether any other provincially protected site lies within this unit cannot be decided from the sources held here.
• The boundary of the central urban area planning extent is not given in the plan text read by this library; the area of Zhetang Subdistrict inside it is still to be established.
• No population or household figures are given, as this library holds no profile page data for this unit.