Tianjin Zhiluo | the west of the river originates from Xiaoliuzhuang

When people mention Hexi now, they all know that it is Hexi District. In fact, Hexi is the concept of the orientation of the west bank of the Haihe River, which Tianjin people have long known, but it is used later as a popular place name with directional pointing. It was only after Tianjin renamed the sixth district to Hexi District in 1956, unlike other popular place names in Tianjin, "Hedong, Hebei, New Hebei, Xitou, Xiabian, Guanshang, Guanxia" has long been called. This is directly related to the fact that the hinterland of the Hexi region is far from the old city and has been in an agricultural area for a long time. The process of urbanization in Tianjin is gradually completed from north to south. Earlier, Tianjin people pointed to the Hexi region as a direct call: "Xiaoliuzhuang, Sanyizhuang and 'German land'" and other old place names. If you open the old map of each period, you will find that Xiaoliuzhuang is the largest node in the Hexi region. Its north is dominated by cultural and commercial belts, and its south is dominated by industrial belts. It flourished early on and around it, while the western hinterland, far from the river, was long interlaced with settlements and farmland, and development was slower. Does this phenomenon tell us that Xiaoliuzhuang is the origin of the development of the river area, and what does the origin of its place name cover up? Did the development and evolution of the Hexi region begin with Xiao Liuzhuang? Let's first explore the place name of Xiaoliuzhuang.

Geographical names are the first carriers of regional culture. Tianjin place names have three characteristics, which are unique to the whole country. One is hydrology, the second is directivity, and the third is water prayer. Xiaoliuzhuang is the earliest settlement on the west bank of the Haihe River, although there is no direct literature locking, but the indirect literature can be inferred to prove the white. As early as the Jin and Yuan dynasties, Tianjin had the name of Zhigu, which is the earliest name of Tianjin and the most characteristic of the river. By the Yuan Dynasty, Dazhigu had become the terminal wharf for ensuring the supply of grain and rice in yuan capital and the transportation of water by sea, and naturally became the first administrative center on the bank of the Haihe River in Tianjin. In the Yuan Dynasty, the Dazhigu area has formed the earliest and perfect regional management and social control system in Tianjin. This area is in the waterfront highland of a large river bend in the Haihe River - Gu. This area is a large riverside area, which must include the east and west banks, but the east bank is the center and the west bank is auxiliary. The west bank is the Xiaoliuzhuang area, which was named later. Many texts in the early Ming Dynasty referred to the surrounding areas of the two sides of the strait as Dazhigu. That is to say, the Xiaoliuzhuang area and the Dazhigu area are always locked together as a whole.

In 1954, a piece of Huang Pu's epitaph was excavated at Pukou Bridge, and the stele was engraved: "Feng Coffin in Jinghai County Dazhigu Hexi Ancestral Ancestral Order", which once again directly proves that the Xiaoliuzhuang area and Dazhigu are a whole, but they were not independent at that time. Obviously, the villages in the Xiaoliuzhuang area were formed in the Yuan Dynasty, much earlier than other villages formed in the Ming and Qing dynasties. And its size and prosperity have always been stronger than other villages. Some people may question that in the published geographical names literature, it is clearly written that Xiaoliuzhuang was a village formed during the Light Years of the Qing Dynasty. In fact, this is the time when Xiao Liuzhuang first appeared independently as a village name in the "Jinmen Baojia Tushu". "Jinmen Baojia Illustration" is the first time that Tianjin officials have conducted a household registration survey of all villages in Tianjin County, which is operated by official literate personnel, and the description of village names will be changed. The "Tsumen Baojia Illustration" is only a survey of the current situation, and the most valuable thing is that it uses diagrams to indicate the relative positions of each village, which provides an accurate account for studying the situation of the villages during the Daoguang years. However, to trace the history of each village, it is still necessary to have previous documents to verify. Xiao Liu Zhuang is an example, indicating that Xiao Liu Zhuang formed a village as early as the Yuan Dynasty, and there is another supporting evidence, that is, the construction of Guandu. In the sixteenth year of the Ming Dynasty (158), Tianjin Bingbei Dao Cha Zhilong ordered Tianjin Sanwei to build a ferry and set up eight ferries, including the Dazhigu Ferry, which is one of the eight official ferries. If the west bank is sparsely populated and not large enough, the official will never establish a ferry port in Dazhigu, and at this time there are many villages along the river in the west of the river, and there is no official ferry, which also shows that dazhigu west prospered earliest. The reason why the name of Xiao LiuZhuang Village is not proposed is still to look at the two sides of the strait as a whole village, and then the west bank is becoming more and more developed, the settlement is larger, and it is natural to take the surname of Liu, a large household in the village, as the name of the village. The "small" of the original name Xiao Liu Zhuang is not small in scale but corresponds to the "big" in Dazhigu. The construction of the imperial temple in the village is also a symbol of the independence of the village. In 1923, the four characters of "Liuzhuang Street" engraved on the archway built at the east entrance of Liuzhuang Avenue were written by Li Xuezeng, a calligrapher in Dazhigu, which also explains the continuous social relations between the two villages. After these analyses, we can say that among the many villages on the west bank of the Haihe River, Xiaoliuzhuang appeared as early as the Yuan Dynasty, and its scale and prosperity in the Ming Dynasty were greater than other villages along the river. After the independence of the Qing Dynasty, it had the name of Xiaoliuzhuang Village. It should be the earliest village in Hexi and the origin of Hexi. With the origin, we can talk about the development of the Hexi region and have a coordinate direction. In 1404, the city was built at the mouth of the Sancha River, and the area around the north gate and the east gate of the city was the first to prosper and there were two popular place names of Hebei and Hedong. Because it is far from the city, the Hexi region did not participate in the earliest urbanization process, but preserved a large amount of land resources and development space characterized by the original ecological farming area, which preserved the potential for the future southward shift of the center of gravity of urban development.

The Ming Dynasty was a period of rapid development in the Hexi region, but the density of villages was less than that of other regions, one is that the area belonged to Jinghai County in the Ming Dynasty and was not assigned to Tianjin County until the Qing Dynasty. Second, the river area is the Tuntian area in the process of setting up guards and tuntian at the same time. From Hejiakou to the Upper and Lower River Circle is the range of the Cross Wall. By the Qing Dynasty, Tianjin General Lan Li planted rice from Haiguang Temple to Hejiakou Weitian in the south of the city, indicating that at this time, the Hexi area was still smelling of chickens and dogs, fish and crabs, and the scenery was still vaguely similar to the scenery of the agricultural belt in Jiangnan. It only changed the situation that the water town of Zeguo was less populated in the past, and pushed the area north to connect with the old city. This state remained until around 1900. At this time, concessions from various countries were built one after another. For the convenience of shipping, most of them expand outwards along the banks of the coastal river, and the low-lying area of the river west is mostly used to dredge the silt of the river channel. In 1895, Germany occupied the southernmost area of the west bank of the Haihe River slightly later than other countries to build a 4200-acre German concession, which made the Hexi region have an extraterritorial style, formed a quiet and calm Germanic cultural style, and also introduced advanced German industrial technology civilization to Hexi District. At the end of the 19th century, tianjin's earliest national industry started in the Xiaoliuzhuang area, and the pioneer was Wu Tiaoqing (Maoding), an early industrial giant in China, who was allowed to open the second national industrial Tianjin Water Supply Company in Hejiakou, Liuzhuang district, in 1886, which was also the earliest joint venture in Tianjin. Subsequently, a large number of light textile industries also developed along the river in this area. Such as: Yue Yuen Textile Company, Beiyang Commercial First Textile Company and many carpet weaving factories. By the 1920s and 1930s, it had become the industrial center of Hexi. Xiaoliuzhuang district, also known as Hexi, became the first urbanized area in Hexi. Rapidly surpassing the east bank of the Haihe River, Japan invaded Tianjin and vigorously expanded the industrial belt along the river, and built a series of papermaking, textile, printing and other enterprises. These enterprises later became the early industrial base that New China took over, and these industrial bases also laid the foundation for New China to plan the southward shift of Tianjin's industrial layout during the "First Five-Year Plan" period. In the 1950s, more than 50 large and medium-sized enterprises belonging to 14 systems, including the Machinery Bureau, building materials bureau, chemical industry bureau, one light bureau, and electronic instrument bureau, were built in the area around Chentangzhuang to form the Chen Tangzhuang Industrial Zone, making Hexi District an industrial zone and textile center in The six urban areas of Tianjin. After entering the new century, these changes have greatly appreciated the land prices in Hexi, and the geographical advantages have become prominent. The Tianjin Municipal Government has positioned Hexi as a "business Hexi". Hexi took the lead in building a cultural region, an economically strong area, and a livable urban area, retaining the vitality and conditions for transforming the economic structure. In short, after the analysis of literature and hydrogeographic laws, we can happily conclude that Xiaoliuzhuang is the origin of the Hexi region, and it is the area where the "purple qi comes from the east" is first seen. (Yin Shupeng)

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Book title: Hexi Origin Lower Tile House

Publisher: Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences Press