Song Kuizhou Road Fortress Of Geography

While former geographic scholars devoted themselves to identify the history of administrative regions,experts recently,especially those from the inland focused their attention on settlements in urban and rural areas.Therefore,Zhaibao which functions as a military settlement was scarcely touched in any specialized research books.Being a unique style of military settlement,it serves as a link of developing into a city or a town at its best,a fair in the middle,or degrading into a fair or village in its worst.Among the many research papers on urban settlements,those halving something to do with the Song Period are,A Research on Urban and Rural Settlement in Song Period, authored by FuZongwen,(Fujian People' s Express,1989),Urban System of China-its Past, Present and future,authored by GuZhaolin,(Commercial Print Express,1992),The Historical Geography of Chinese Cities,authored by MaZhenglin,(Shandong Education Express,1998).These researches made valuable and insightful discussions on the historical circumstances and environmental conditions of city origin,birth of urban system,as well as the size,structure, location and the relationship between military settlements and cities or towns.It pointed out that a large number of cities and towns are originated form military settlements.Zhaibao,as a kind of basic military settlement that once largely existed in the two Song Periods,with on exception, developed into fairs and villages in centuries that followed,some of which even became prototypes of many modern cities.Former researches,except for those generalizations,are papers that,in space,mainly focused on the Northern China where the Qing and Jin Dynasties located;in time,mainly devoted to the Ming and Qing periods.Besides,they also made in-depth discussion on its function,distribution as well as architectural structures,etc.However,as to the most important problem,that is,identifying the specific location of Zhaibao in Song periods,(two Dynasties once existed before Ming and Qing Periods) there were not any specialized studies.Among former geographic studies on historical geography or geography of administrative regions,sometimes,there were some chapters discussing that problem,however,they were not comprehensive enough,and those referring to the historical geography ofZhaibao ofKuizhou(a province in Song Period),were still a complete blank.In fact,without full and accurate identifications on its spatial and temporal distributions as well as location changes,all the relevant researches on settlements like Zhaibao would decline into eye-attracting or isolated ones,just like a lifeless pond that has no fresh resources.On the contrary, only if we make that problem clear,can our researches be of help to the construction and development of mid-sized cities at present and in the future as well.Since among the four provinces in Sichuan area during the Song periods,Kuizhou possesses the largest number of Zhaibaos,which were intensively distributed in some cities(they call Zhou or Jun then),which directly controls minorities in Southeast China.Apart form that,richness in huge high mountains,complicated water systems and large numbers of minorities make the circumstance in this area so complex and typical that it can fully display various reasons for the establishment of Zhaibao.Therefore,studying its geographic and historical changes can reflex the threads of thought on city development those days and that throughout history,the historical and geographic background of the rise and fall of a city,the evolution origin of basic military divisions and the evolving and distribution rules of residential areas for minorities in Southwest China since Song Dynasty,and it can be of much academic significance to research as well.In terms of practical significance,among the great number of Zhaibao in Kuizhou in Song Dynasty,some developed to be cities or towns,some declined to be villages,others disappeared from this world.This phenomenon somewhat can of practical warning help to the site selection, planning and developing of a city and building up or abolishing of a military base at present as well as in the future.Kuizhou in Song Dynasty would include sixteen houses,states,the army's and supervisor's, namely Chongqing house of Yuzhou,Xianchun house of Zhongzhou,Shaoqing house of Qianzhou, Kuizhou,Dazhou,Fuzhou,Wanzhou,Kaizhou,Shizhou,Bozhou,Sizhou,Zhenzhou,Yu'an army 's,Nianping army's,Darling supervisor's,etc.It covers four cities and provinces of today, namely Chongqing,Sichuan,Hubei and Guizhou.The Song Dynasty gradually established about one hundred military settlements in Kuizhou,a boundless land,where intricate landscape combined with complicated ethnical,economical,political and military circumstances.These settlements were always placed at important strategic passes or places across Southwest China where the minorities dwelt.So far,except that we could not be assured whether there was a Zhaibao in Kuizhou and Dazhou,the rest in other places can all be found out in records made on Zhaibao.As the time went on,and the irregularity of building up and abolishing a blockade,those military blockades are not known to people nowadays.Hence,through analyzing relevant historical information and paying on-spot visit as well as referring to the maps,so as to identify and verify its spatial and temporal evolution history and its present location can not only be of great significance to researches on the evolution history of ethnical system in Kuizhou and directions on the development of mid-sized cities in this area,but also of reference value to the distribution of minorities on Southwest China.Moreover,it has unique significance to the division of administrative regions at county level in Song Dynasty.In terms of the research time,it would include the two Song periods,namely Northern Song Dynasty and Southern Song Dynasty.In terms of space,it would be confined to Kuizhou of the two Song Periods,which covers most of today's Chongqing,Northern Guizhou,and Western Hubei. The chapter divisions are made according to provincial areas within which the city government of those days located.The identification of Zhaibao in this paper mainly refers to the ones that mentioned in articles of Song and Yuan Dynasties,which function as basic military organizations that were established officially to control and arrest robbers.Therefore,centering on doing full time and space researches and records and focusing on making use of bibliography to identify and verify the results,as well as paying on-spot visits,map-reading and making,and making comparisons,I made experimental researches on the evolution of historical geography of more than one hundred blockades in Kuizhou,both spatially and temporally, hoping that my superficial points of view would induce something far-reaching.Apart from identifying their present locations of those blockades,I rearranged other relevant records,adding some rectifications and explanations.Besides,I also discussed the name origin of those blockades and reasons for their abolishment.At the same time,considering that zhaibao is a unique military settlement as well as a living place for human beings,this article discussed its evolution rules while talking about its changes in both aspects of time and space.