ABSTRACT
This is a translation of a remark that Huai Yin Bu and Huang Ren, the compilers of 1763 edition of Quanzhou Prefecture Gazette, made regarding the history of Quanzhou. In the imperial historians’ discourse, all the periods prior to the “heyday” of the Qing were understood as a “dark age.” They acknowledged the post-Tang extension of “civilization” into the area, but in so doing they made it sound as if this area had begun to prosper only during the three “fl ourishing reigns” [shengshi] of the early Qing (the late seventeenth century and the early half of eighteenth century), during which they served as high-ranking offi cials.
