Lixiang

Traditional village listing

The list published on the provincial housing department's website on 8 April 2020 records 107 villages in the first batch of traditional villages of Jiangsu. Lixiang appears as "Lixiang, Shitouzhai Village, Baima Town", in the same batch as Cangkou in Tangxi Village, Honglan Subdistrict. The list was identified by the provincial department of housing and urban-rural development with four other provincial departments and published on 7 April 2020.

Protected status and the revolutionary designation

Item 2 of the third batch of district-level protected sites published by the Lishui District People's Government under Li Zheng Fa [2017] No. 197 is the "Lixiang Revolutionary Site Building Group", dated to the modern period, with its location given as Lixiang Village, Baima Town. Two levels must be kept apart here: the protected status refers to the building group, which is a district-level protected site; the designation "Red Lixiang" as a commemorative place refers to the village and its sites as a whole. The two are not the same thing, so this entry cites the list only to establish the grade, batch and period of the building group, while the wartime history and garrison sites at village level belong to the history site of this group.

A reply issued on 29 July 2022 by Nanjing Lishui Industrial Investment and Holding Group and carried on the district government website corroborates the state of conservation and use here: the reply records that the group has divided Cangkou, Shishanxia and Lixiang into three characteristic traditional villages for grouped development, and that projects including "the Red Lixiang patriotic education base with Lijiashan, and the Qiu and Fan ancestral halls at Cangkou Village have been completed and put into operation". It follows that the Lixiang project was complete and operating no later than July 2022; the reply gives no specific completion year, and none is inferred.

The wartime history of Red Lixiang can be checked in a report of 12 April 2021 on the Party History Channel of People's Daily Online: in May 1938 the New Fourth Army advanced from southern Anhui into southern Jiangsu and reached Lishui, and Lixiang successively served as the regimental headquarters of the 1st Regiment of the 1st Brigade and the 4th Regiment of the 2nd Brigade of the New Fourth Army, and later of the 46th Regiment; after the Tangma battle of November 1941, the leading Party and military organs of southern Jiangsu and the main New Fourth Army forces moved to Lixiang and its surroundings; the Lixiang area was also the seat of organs such as the CPC Suwan District Committee, the Administrative Office of Southern Jiangsu and the 16th Brigade of the Sixth Division of the New Fourth Army. This entry cites these only to show the position and reach of Lixiang during the war; the specific organ names, unit numbers and battle history belong to the history site of this group.

Division of work with other sites

The wartime history of Lixiang, its garrison sites and related commemorative installations belong to the history site of this group; this entry records only the village itself, its place on the list and the state of its conservation and use.

Points of doubt

• The date of founding, the origin of the name and surviving structures are not recorded in the sources used here.
• Lixiang is a settlement within Shitouzhai Village and has a separate entry from the administrative village. It is Lixiang that entered the provincial list, while it is Shitouzhai Village that entered the Chinese list.
• The address in the district protected list reads "Lixiang Village, Baima Town", treating Lixiang as a village-level unit, which differs from this library's reading of Lixiang as a settlement within Shitouzhai Village on the basis of the traditional village list; the three-level form of the list is followed here, and the standard form of the village name needs separate checking.
• "Completed and put into operation" indicates only the state as of July 2022; the reply gives no completion year and none is inferred.
• The People's Daily Online report is a secondary account on party history, used only to show Lixiang's position as the seat of wartime organs; evaluative statements about party history are not adopted here.