The Minzhou Zongguanfu (General Administration Office) was the product of the deteriorating of the relationship between Tang and Tuyuhun which was moving from cooperation to conflict. During the Wude period, the jurisdiction of the governor’s government expanded from north to south, reflecting the Tang defense strategy in the face of the aggressions from the Tuyuhun. By expanding the jurisdiction of the Minzhou General Administration Office, the Tang Dynasty first established a linkage between the prefectures in the Taoshui and Qiangshui basin with Minzhou as the pivot to protect the Weihe Valley passage from Chang’an to the Western Regions. Subsequently, a Wuzhou node was established to connect theprefectures in the Qiangshui and Baishui basins to protect the Sanguan Road from Yizhou to Chang’an. During the Zhenguan period, its jurisdiction shrank from south to north and east to west in accordance with Tang’s military advances. By reducing the area under the jurisdiction of the Minzhou Dudufu (succeeding the Zongguanfu) and the division of territory with the Songzhou Dudufu, the Tang could focus on pacifyng the Tangut and regime change of the Tuyuhun. Behind this expansion and shrinkage of jurisdiction hides the irreconcilable conflict between Tang and Tuyuhun over border security, which proved to be the norm rather than the temporary cooperation.

Both the records of historical documents in the early Ming Dynasty, and the Plaque of the “Timasa Pacification Commission” found in Assam Pradesh, India, indicate that the Gula Chiefdoms set up in the southwest frontier region in the early Ming Dynasty were actually located in the Brahmaputra Valley. Since the Han and Tang Dynasties, the Brahmaputra Valley had been an important channel connecting China and the South Asia. After the reunification of Yunnan, the Ming dynasty actively managed the southwestern frontier. With the continuous expansion of the influence of the Ming China, the Gula tribes established political contact with the Ming Dynasty and the latter then set up chiefdoms in this area. Although the relationship between the Ming dynasty and the Gula chiefdoms did not last long, the re-opening of the land Silk Road to South Asia greatly expanded the geographical cognition of the ancient Chinese.

In Ming Dynasty, the ranking system of the administrative division of prefectures and counties were initially accorded to the amount of taxes and levied grain, hence the different grades of officials. In the fourteenth year of Hongwu, taxation and location were also used in determining the social and natural quality of the divisions, namely Fan or Jian, as well as the assessment methods of officials. Yang Yunsheng proposed to divide the administrative hierarchy into three levels according to administrative workload, geographic location and transportation during the Jiajing years. Consequently, the Ministry of Personnel unified the administrative divisions into three levels in the first year of Longqing. According to the statistics recorded in the Da ming guan zhi, the places with important roads, heavy workload, dire taxation were mostly concentrated in the Southern Zhili, Northern Zhili, and Jiangxi provinces, among which the places along the canals were particularly typical. Officials were selected to fill in the positions of Fan or Jian in the late Ming dynasty, but the ranking system was not continued after the implementation of the method of drawing lots. The ranking system in the Ming Dynasty had a great influence on the Qing Dynasty, and the spatial distribution of the administrative divisions in the Ming and Qing Dynasties also had certain similarities.

In the early Qing Dynasty, the boundary dispute between Ordos Mongolian and Ningxia Garrison over the Cha Han Tuo Hu(查汉托护) is essentially the competition for natural resources between the Mongols and Han. The resolution of the boundary disputes reflected the transformation of the nation of ethnic management and border governance of the central government in the early Qing Dynasty,as well as the improvement of its governance capability. Through a series of economic, political and military manoeuvre, the Qing government completed the adjustment of the administrative territory of Cha Han Tuo Hu. It was mainly reflected in three aspects: firstly Cha Han Tuo Hu was made in agricultural area through establishing a system of irrigation and raising farmers for rehabilitation,thus changing the main economic attributes of the territory. Secondly,by establishing the county system, Cha Han Tuo Hu was incorporated into the inland and local administrative system of prefectures, which truly transformed the political nature of the Ningxia Garrison from border land to inland. Thirdly a new patrolling and defensive system was established in Cha Han Tuo Hu area, which was similar to local security system in other inland provinces in the Qing Dynasty, and eventually replaced the Weisuo system the Qing had inherited from the Ming Dynasty.

The Zhendi Circuit of Xinjiang during the Qing Dynasty was formed on the basis of both the Anxi circuit and the Liangwu Circuit of Urumqi. During the relatively peaceful era before the Tongzhi period, the Zhendi Circuit functioned in the capacity of provincial governor and surveillance commissioner. There were formal and hierarchical administrative districts and sub-official defence posts that also functioned as administrative district under its jurisdiction. It was administered by the Viceroy of Shaanxi and Gansu, and at the same time jointly liaised to the Urumqi Dutong, while Urumqi Dutong was a subordinate to the Yili General before the Tongzhi period. However, the Governor of Shaanxi and Gansu not being based at Urumqi meant that its administration was to a large extent remote, and the Yili General’s control over the Urumqi Dutong was nominal, which made Urumqi Dutong’s administration to Zhendi Circuit rather uninterrupted. As such, the Circuit Intendant took the mandate of provincial governor and surveillance commissioner, and that of Dutong was comparable to Viceroy. The district formed was a special type of quasi-provincial jurisdiction: the Urumqi Dutong, which was relatively independent. This special administration system was imitated in other districts that were facing similar situation for reference purpose.

In the late Qing Dynasty and the Period of Republic of China, the provincial government of Xinjiang actively promoted the reform of administrative divisions and created a large number of new county-level administrative districts, in order to meet the needs of frontier management. It’s worth an in-depth study on the characteristics of these new counties, and the similarities and differences between them and the counties in the hinterland. By restoring the process of Horgos County’s establishment and reconstructing its boundaries in 1914 using archives and maps, this study reveals the political considerations of the provincial government of Xinjiang including strengthening the military defense, diplomacy, management of foreign trade and domestic affairs, when establishing new counties along the border area between China and Russia. At the same time, this case also shows that in the process of delineating the boundaries of administration districts in the modern frontier areas, in addition to concerns over traditional principle of following mountains and rivers, domestic and foreign political relations such as disputes over national boundaries, economic distribution, and the local warlords’ own benefits also affect the delimitation.

The flow direction of the mainstream shifted from southwards to northwards in the Chang-Xi-Cheng District, northwest of the Taihu Lake Basin, from pre-Han Dynasty to today. The turning point was approximately between the Tang and Song Dynasties. This was driven by the long-term external factors such as the advance and retreat of coastlines, the variation of tidal power and the water storage and drainage situations in the Taihu Lake Basin over historical periods. Influenced by the variation of mainstream flow directions, the reclamation process of Furong Lake can be divided into three stages. Before the Tang Dynasty, the reclamation attempts in the Furong Lake Area were mainly conducted in the east of Wuxi and the south of the primitive Grand Canal in Wuxi section to adapt to southward characteristics of the mainstream flow in this time. Such projects changed the original form of the south edge of the Furong lake, and shaped the boundary-con-bank between the Furong lake, primitive canal and Taihu Lake. In mid-Tang Dynasty, the south edge of the the Furong Lake retreated by nine li (traditional Chinese length units, one li equals 500 meters approximately) north of the Wuxi section of the Grand Canal. The overall hydrological pattern in the Song Dynasty made it hard for the long-lasting success of reclamations of the Furong lake. All the attempts in this time such as the dredging of river channels and the construction of weir and gate system were soon proved unsustainable. The variation of hydrological patterns in not only the Chang-Xi-Cheng District but also the entire Taihu Lake Basin since the Yuan and Ming Dynasties was the fundamental factor for the complete and final reclamation success of the Furong lake. The dynamic variation of water flows was not only affected the reclamation process of the Furong Lake, but also recorded in the writings of relevant historical material.

Despite that barnyard millet was, in Chinese mainstream narratives on agricultural history, considered a kind of weed that grew along with rice in paddy fields or a rescue crop in years of famine, it was a key staple crop in northeastern China in traditional periods, whose status was not inferior to that of five cereals. The stress resistance attributes, i.e., cold resistant and moisture resistant, made barnyard millet a major player in the development history of low wetlands in northeastern China. Based on their long-term cultivation practices, local farmers bred a number of high yielding and waterlogging resistant varieties, and created a full set of rather distinctive cultivation techniques. Since modern times, along with the rise of the development of water conservatory projects in farmlands in northeastern China, as well as the introduction of a number of cold resistant lowland rice varieties, the low wetlands where barnyard millet had been planted have been transformed into paddy fields, while high-yielding quality lowland rice has started to play a major role in the development of low wetlands. Barnyard millet has faded out of people’s sight as a grain and been turned into a kind of forage only. To some extent, the retreat history of barnyard millet is an epitome of the history of both the low wetlands development and the agricultural development of mid- and high-latitude northeastern Asia since modern times.

Foreign owned trading companies were an essential institution between China and western countries in modern times. Its spatial evolution and strategy represent imperialism’s destructive and reconstructive influences on Chinese cities. This paper takes Tianjin as a case study, and analyzes the important role that foreign companies played in urban development through a visual analysis of its spatial evolution process using HGIS. The result shows that Tianjin, as a trading center in northern China attracted a large number of foreign companies, which formed a unique spatial system. These foreign companies had a complex impact on the formation and transformation of the urban spatial structure of modern Tianjin, as they did on other treaty port cities.

Due to the lack of altitude gradient of sewers and scouring capacity of rivers, the old sewerage system in the Shanghai International Settlement was not fully capable of handling domestic waste. In the 1910s, in order to cope with the challenge brought by water-closets, the Municipal Council decided to build an underground separate sewerage system to accomplish the transformation of sewage treatment method from combined sewers to separate sewers. From 1921 to 1934, on the basis of combining the experience of Anglo- American municipal engineering and the geographical situation of Shanghai, the Council gradually constructed a brand-new sewer network with three levels including the main, the subsidiary and house sewers. Through the spatial competition and functional linkage between the sewers and other municipal pipelines, the upgrading of the sewerage system had brought about the integration of urban subterranean space.

The word zhao in oracle inscriptions means frontier, so the phrase Hedongzhao could be interpreted as area to the east of the Yellow River which was located near Puyang, Henan province today. The kings of Shang dynasty often hunt or patrolled in the Hedongzhao and neighbouring sites such as Gun and Wei, and sent officers to inspect the ferry, so as to consolidate the control over the xiaodong area. At the same time, Hedongzhao was for the Shang people the starting point of the route into the dadong area around the Tai Mountain by first crossing the Ji river hear Liaocheng and Pingyin of today. They might, however, also go southeast from Puyang and arrive at the south of the Wen River by way of the ancient Daye Lake. In Zhou dynasty, with the political center transferring from Anyang to Qixian-Puyang, the importance of the north ferry in Hedongzhao decreased even though it was still in use.

In the late Warring States period, Han occupied some counties on both sides of the Yellow River, including Xinzhong Anyang, Ancheng and Li.Geographically, they were connected to the recovered Shangdang Prefecture to form a buffer zone for defensing the country. By combing the handed down documents and related ancient written material, we can infer that the Xincheng in the late Han weapon inscriptions is not located in Yichuan, but in Xinmi. The so-called “Zhang Tang attacking Zheng” in Qin Benji has nothing to do with the capital of Han, and there is no mistaken word. The “Zheng” in that event should be in the Henei area of the Wei.

In the middle and late Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan government restored a number of prefectures and counties in Sichuan Province. By comparing the historical records and data of schools, ancestral temples and famous officials, we can summarize that from Dade to Zhizheng, the restored administrative districts included three prefectures, namely Rong, Zi, and long, and nine counties of Jingyan, Neijiang, Anyue, Changning, Dazu, Lechang, Jiangyou, Baoning and Tongjiang. Another Shiyang county was newly established. The main reasons for the restoration were the growth of population. These administrative districts shared three characteristics: most of them were established on the basis of the inspection department (xunjiansi), insufficient population and low efficiency.