ABSTRACT
Sometime about 1620, Ding Yuanjian (1563-1628, js. 1586) was boating through the southern part of his native Changxing county. One of the five counties making up Zhejiang's Huzhou prefecture, Changxing bordered the southern shore of Lake Tai, the vast body of water that served as the hydraulic heart of the Yangzi Delta. Together with Wucheng county on its eastern side, Changxing was known as the wettest part of the prefecture, a water world of low-lying paddy fields. Ding was gliding past a village called Lüshan when he caught sight of an inscribed stone on the bank. He made this entry in his diary:
I noticed a stone marker over two chi [2/3 m] high on which was inscribed "such-and-such-character polder, totalling so many mu in area." The writing was almost indecipherable. The thing must have been over two hundred years old. Every sector and every polder once had them. Given their great age, some have been broken, others submerged in the water, others carried off by people. I didn't have the opportunity to search them all out in all the sectors and polders. Thinking about this kind of system, which combined polders into sectors and sectors into counties, I found that, as a registration method, it is simple and clear. 1
