The Lixia River Plain, consisting of a great number of small lakes and swamps, spread widely in the north of Jiangsu Province in history. After 1570, the flood of Huaihe River entering Lixia River Plain continued to increase, which caused great changes in the distribution of lakes and drainage pattern in the region. After 1596, the flood from the Jinghe River and the Ziyinggou River entered into the Guangyang Lake, and then flowed through the Sheyang Lake into the sea. The waters in the southeast of Gaoyou all converge in the Luyang Lake. After 1681, due to the southward shift of the Guihai Dams, floods converged in the middle of the Lixia River Plain and overflowed from the south to the north. As a result, the Dazong Lake and other lakes were connected and merged as a whole. Due to the decrease of flood, the Guangyang Lake was divided into several scattered lakes. Whether the Guihai Dams were opened or not, it would directly affect the hydrological environment of the Lixia River Plain, and thus form two completely different lake distribution and drainage patterns in the flood period and normal period.

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.

A map of the English Settlement in Shanghai right after its port-opening collected by the British Royal Geographical Society did not mark its drawing time. One view holds the map was drawn in 1846-1847, another infers that in 1844-1847, but both are speculative. We reconsider its drawing time and try to evaluate the map based on the information on it. The results show the map should be drawn from October 1st to October 19th, 1846. It is the earliest map of English Settlement in Shanghai having found, and a very important source to study the developing process of English Settlement. Also, this map is of great value for the study of Land Deed.

According to the narrate on Xuanzang’s smuggling out of the Yumen Pass from Guazhou recorded in “The Biography of Master Sanzang of the Daci’en Temple”, combined with studies on Soviet military maps and field investigations to carry out “accurate restoration”, it is determined that the site of Xiaowan City is the only possibility of the site of the Yumen Pass in the Tang Dynasty. A deserted beacon was discovered at the southern end of the Jieshanzi Valley, making it even more certain that this road was the route from Guazhou City to the Yumen Pass in the Tang Dynasty.

Historical records after the late Ming Dynasty generally claim that Nanwang has been the “water ridge” occupying a commanding height alongside the Huitong Canal, which is a section of the Grand Canal, since the Yuan Dynasty, and the key determining the success of the Huitong Canal in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties lies in choosing Nanwang “water ridge” as the water diversion hub. This paper proposes that this view is incorrect. Nanwang was originally the last remnant of Liangshanpo with a low-lying terrain. It began to silt up after Song Li diverted Wenshui River water to Nanwang for transportation in the early Ming Dynasty. In the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty, the pivotal position of Nanwang as the water diversion hub was determined. By then the mud and sand dug out and piled up on both sides of the river created a landform of heaped-up hill, hence the “water ridge” image in the eyes of people since the late Ming Dynasty. That is to say, the Nanwang “water ridge” was formed in the Mid Ming Dynasty as a result of natural sediment accumulation and artificial dredging. Based on this, this paper re-examines the reasons determining the success or failure of the Huitong Canal in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties and discusses the significance of the formation of the Nanwang “water ridge” on transforming the Huitong Canal from a river depending on the violent Yellow River for water supplies to the one that relies on the stable Wenshui River for water source in the middle of the Ming Dynasty as well as its far-reaching influence on the principle of Yellow River maintenance after the Mid Mind Dynasty.

On the lower reach of Damagou River in Tarim Basis, there was a desertified area once an oasis, it was about 80 square kilometers. On the ancient oasis area, many relics were scattered, such as Huyangdun Buddha temple ruins, Tuopulukedun Buddha Temple ruins, Big Graveyard, Huyang Graveyard, Kalaqin Ancient City, and Sipier Ancient City. The textual research shows the Kalaqin Ancient City was Kanchengzhen (Kanzhou) in Tang Dynasty, also the Phema City. In those years, the Kalaqin Ancient City was of a large population, commercially developed, and prosperous for Buddhism, but abandoned and desertified after 790 A.D. The Sipier Ancient City was the former capital of Qule State in Han Dynasty, but also abandoned and desertified in late Wei and Jin dynastys. The author analyzed two stages of desertification in the ancient oases and its causes.

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.

Located along the lower reaches of Daqing River and Ziya River, the Wen’anwa(文安洼) in Wen’an and Dacheng County of Hebei Province is a low-lying depression and shaped like “the bottom of a cauldron” in colloquial language. It is difficult to drain its water reserve, which often caused severe flood disasters in the past. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Wen’an County took many measures, such as building dikes, diverting river courses, and planting rice in shallow water, to control the flood but to no avail. It was not only the environmental factors, such as the low-lying terrain and the silt of the lower reaches of Daqing River and Ziya River, that made it hard to control the flood in the Wen’anwa Depression, but also social factors, such as the conflicting interests of water control between Wen’an County and the surrounding prefectural and counties, and the lack of ability and tactfulness of water management by Wen’an County itself.

The Sacred Mountain and Holy Lakes located in the grand Yarlung Tsanpo Valley in the southern part of Ali Region, Tibet, that have been listed in the Preparation List of World Heritage Sites of Natural and Cultural Heritage include the Mount Gang Rinpoche, the Lake Mapam Yutso, the Lake Lana Tso. The four rivers originated in the vicinity are the Senge Kabab (the lion river), the langchen Kabab (the elephant river), the Macha Kabab (the peacock river), and the Tsangpo Kabab (the horse river), all which are the source of several world-famous rivers, such as the Indus River, the Ganges River, the Yarlung Tsanpo River and the Brahmaputra River.

In the ancient tradition of China and India, the Gang Renboqi mountain and its surrounding lakes and rivers had extremely important symbolic meanings, and they were the geographical landmarks indicating the center of the cosmological world. In the historical period, there were four ancient divine worldviews being formed around the Sacred Mountain and Holy Lakes in Ali, Tibet.

The first one is recognized by the local Bon religion of Zhangzhung culture in Ali area; the second one is the cosmological world center of anavatapta, which is recognized by Buddhism; the third one is the cosmological world center of Kunlun Mountain and Yao-chi, which is recognized by the ancient Chinese Book of Mountains and Seas; and the fourth one is the cosmological world center of Kailash (Kailasa), which was recognized by Hinduism. The four cosmography systems originated independently, formed their own special cognitive systems, and communicated and merged with other systems in history.

The integration of the Kunlun Mountain cosmological world view and the Buddhist Anavatapta cosmological world view happened around 1 500 years ago, and the new world view had a wide range of impact on ancient Chinese cosmography. In 1720, this world view was projected on the surveyed map, and the ancient subjective cognition was finally located into the concrete geographical objects of the Sacred Mountains and Lakes.

The water area of Dianchi Lake is basically stable from Ming and Qing dynasties thanks to the annual dredging of the Haikou area. Still, seasonal change in water level is not completely solved due to frequent flood disasters. The deep rice was gradually planted systematically in Ming and Qing dynasties along the coast of Dianchi Lake to adapt to the seasonal changes in the waters in the Dianchi Lake, realizing the ecological coupling of low-field deepwater rice cultivation with seasonal changes in the water level. The situation changed completely in the late 1960s. With the construction of reservoirs and other water conservancy projects in the upper reaches of the Dianchi Lake, the lakeside and low fields were gradually drained, and the water environment for the deepwater rice was lost. From the point of view of the interactive relationship between the water environment of the Dianchi Lake and rice-growing ecology, if only the regional environment changes regularly for a long time, human beings may gradually turn “harm” into “benefit”, which is the proof of human wisdom to adapt to and make use of nature.

During Ming and Qing dynasties, the water environment of Fuzhou’s West Lake gradually deteriorated. In Ming Dynasty, the water source of West Lake was abundant and the water quality was good. Since Wanli’s reign, affected by social factors such as land reclamation, the West Lake shrunk in size and the water quality was affected. In the middle to late Qing Dynasty, waterways in Fuzhou were shallow, and the river tide eventually disappeared. The changes in water environment of the West Lake during the Ming and Qing dynasties were not only affected by regional climate change in humidity, forest soil and water conservation, and lake sedimentation, but also closely related to water and land disputes. Due to the dire human-land bearing ratio, the unclear ownership of water resources, and the vague taxation regulations on newly reclaimed lake fields, excessive lake reclamation became inevitable. The local government made considerable efforts, such as repairing floodgates and protecting lake embankment, turning the reclaimed land back to water surface, cleaning up feces and silt, etc., which achieved phased effects. However, affected by the socio-economic factors such as population pressure, land resource limits and ecological patterns, the West Lake still deteriorated due to the accumulated problems over the centuries.

The Huaiyuan Posthouse of Canton was located in Xianzibu, Sai-kwan from the Ming to the early Qing Dynasties, which was the place where the Kwangtung Shi-Po-Si(广东市舶司) received the tribute ships and foreign envoys onboard those ships. It also functioned as the site for China-foreign tributary trade. With establishment of the Hoppo during the Kangxi reign, the Thirteen Hongs (factories) were assigned with the task of undertaking foreign trade. After many efforts, foreign tradesmen were allowed to rent commercial houses and set up factories in the Thirteen-Factory Street to the south of the Huaiyuan Posthouse. The Hongs were was managed by merchants. The Huaiyuan Posthouse was abolished in the late Kangxi emperor. The Thirteen factories basically replaced the functions of the Huaiyuan Posthouse. The essence of this shift from the Huaiyuan Posthouse to the Thirteen Hongs is the declined of the tributary system in Qing Dynasty and the rise of the Canton trade through the Hongs.

At the turn of the Twentieth century, Western municipal concepts and theories were gradually introduced into China along with the examples set by treaty port cities. Some traditional cities formed in the dynastic time also began to carry out modern municipal constructions. In this study, we take Ningbo old city as a typical case and focus on three ways of road improvements in the 1920s and 1930s: the demolition of the city wall, the filling of rivers and the removal of residential buildings. Based on earlier studies, we use large-scale old maps and local gazettes to restore and analyze the river channels and road networks. It shows that for the traditional cities in China, due to the lack of motivation and capital, even if the urban administrative districts had been set up, it might not be able to promote the conditions. On the contrary, it caused many social problems especially during the expropriation of construction land.

The anonymous Zuo Shanmu Fangpai Yaolan (Keys to Chinese Fir Wood Business and River Transportation) offers a slightly different view from previously discovered and rather common itinerary books on the Xin’an River-Qiantang River business journey. In addition to the place names and the distance along the way, it also includes many rules of wood business operation, which makes it a comprehensive business manual. Accordingly, we can explore the many facts of Huizhou merchants’ conducts in timber industry in the Qiantang River basin. The book contains business secrets of Hui-Xi merchants engaged in Qugang timber transportation and marketing, including five sections of continuous water routes along the way and a land route back to the hometown. On that basis, we can outline the route of Hui-Xi merchants engaged in Qugang wood business, and examine their related business norms more closely. From this point of view, the success of Hui merchants in the traditional times depended not only on their abundant wealth and higher cultural quality, but was also closely related to the relevant technologies and business norms they professed and spread.

This paper compares the geographical elements, such as traffic stations, river systems, village names, and prefectures or counties’ names, of the northeastern part of the three measured maps in Qing Dynasty, including two versions of the Kangxi Huangyu Quanlan Tu, the Yongzheng Shipai Tu and the Qianlong Shisanpai Tu. It shows that, at least in the northeastern part, the copper plate version of the Huangyu Quanlan Tu’s relationship with the Shipai Tu and the Shisanpai Tu is closer than that of the Fuchs version of Huangyu Quanlan Tu. And the geographical element information in Shisanpai Tu was mainly derived from the Shipai Tu.

The Royal Road System was a road network of the Persian Empire, and routes of the Royal Road System have long been disputed among scholars. The records in Herodotus's History and Persepolis Administrative Archives reflect the general characteristics of the Royal Road which are also the criteria for identifying them from ancient roads. Although multidisciplinary research methods have provided assistances to the reconstruction of routes of the Royal Road System, they also caused many controversies. In general, routes of the Royal Road System in Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Armenia are relatively accurate. There is no way to infer routes of the Royal Road System in Egypt or Arabia. Routes of the Royal Road System in eastern satrapies are based on classical texts. However, the Royal Roads were not the general term for ancient roads in Persian Empire, and the diachronic changes of ancient roads are still very significant. With the help of the interpretation of cuneiform characters, archaeological excavations and scientific historical geography, the study of the Royal Road System may will overcome its dependence on classical texts research.

Collected by the Nanjing Museum, the Atlas of Border Towns mainly depicts fifteen border towns of significance in Ming dynasty. It used to be collected and commented by Yizhai. The atlas is also compiled into Atlas of Ancient Maps in China (Ming Dynasty) and Collection of Ming Dynasty Maps. After been inspected by Zhang Baochai, the atlas gradually draws attention from the academic circle. According to the current research, the atlas was produced during the 32nd to 33rd year of the Wanli's reign of Ming Dynasty, with Luo Hongxian's Enlarged Terrestrial Atlas as its main reference. Its collector, Yizhai, was believed to have lived in Qing Dynasty. However, after examination and verification, it is proved that the atlas was drawn during the 3rd to 4th year of Kangxi's reign of Qing Dynasty. The author of the work, whose surname is Huang, was a Ming loyalist. He mainly referred to Chen Zushou's Atlas of Territories of August Ming. The collector of the work, Yizhai, is Cheng Zhiqing, a seal carver from Suzhou. Bonze Yiling could be inferred as Qu Dajun, a famous scholar who lived in the early Qing Dynasty.

Qing Dynasty officials organized several expeditions to explore the source of the Yellow River. In the late Qing Dynasty, Westerners also did a lot of explorations. The results of the source explorations reflected the understanding of the very question in the Qing Dynasty. Constrainted by surveying and mapping conditions, the water system of the source area of the Yellow River was not fully understood. Therefore, the conclusion drawn from current textual researches on the basis of the source of the Yellow River as explored in the Qing Dynasty might be problematic. Similarly, the historical maps compiled and drawn on the same basisare also worth examing. In this paper I argue that it is appropriate to take a fuzzy approach to the labeling of the river sources in Qing Dynasty.

Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty adjusted the administrative divisions in Huainan region and Wu region after the “Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms”. The King of Runan was transfered to be the King of Jiangdu, governing Dongyang Prefecture and the northern counties in the old Zhang Prefecture. The rest of the old Zhang Prefecture was merged with the Kuaiji Prefecture to form the new Kuaiji Prefecture. Similarly, The King of Lujiang became King of Hengshan and the new prefecture of Lujiang was established in the southeast of the old Hengshan kingdom. The original Lujiang south to the Yangtze River was combined with Yuzhang to form the new Yuzhang Prefecture. This adjustment was not only a part of the centralization policy, but also a reconstruction of the political geography in the southeast region.

In the mid-Qing Dynasty, the flood level of the Jingjiang River (a section of the Yangtze River) began to rise and was repeatedly recorded in the Sanxun Anlan Zouben of the Qing Palace Memorials and Archives of the Grand Council. During the Xianfeng and Tongzhi reigns, after the Ouchi and Songzi dikes collapsed and the main flow diverged to the Dongting Lake, the flood level eased temporarily and rose again rapidly in the Guangxu’s reign. The rising flood level affected the courses, and water environment of the rivers flowing southward into the Yangtze River. In the Juzhang River Basin, this involves the expansion, separation, and approaching northward of the Bailizhou Island in the Yangtze River, shifts of the estuary of the Juzhang River, the shift of the main Yangtze River course, the extension of the lower reaches of the Juzhang River caused by the adjoining of Lower Bailizhou with the east bank, as well as the silt caused by the counter-balanced effect of the river flow and mountain torrents. In the Ma’nao River Basin, the backwater effect of the rising flood level at the estuary turned the area into a swamp.

Boundary and jurisdiction are important geographical elements of the administrative division. In Qing Dynasty, a total of 203 county-level administrative divisions were split, most of which resulted in creation of new counties, while a few produced Zhili Ting (Para-county under the direct jurisdiction of the central government). As the number of county-level administrative divisions increased, the cultural and geographical elements such as the gathering point or the wicker edge had become important basis for deciding boundaries. The areas with more intensive adjustment of county boundaries were Fengtian, southern Jiangsu, southern Shaanxi, eastern Sichuan, and the junction between Fujian and Guangdong. More county-level administrative divisions had been added in these regions, reflecting their regional development process in the Qing Dynasty. As an administrative means of balancing local governance, dividing the border operated and evolved under the factors such as rectifying upheavals, grass-roots governance and responding to the border crisis. The spatial form of the county boundary was generally formed according to the principles of natural features including mountains and rivers, shaping a reasonable jurisdiction area, and adjusting the distance from the administrative center.

The Imjin War (1592-1598) was an important historical event with far-reaching influence in East Asia at the end of the 16th Century. The importance of the formation of Huayi Yanhai Tu, a map related with the war situation, is also noteworthy in academic cartography. Through a comprehensive analysis of both Chinese and Korean historical accounts, especially intensive examinations of the Annals of the Chosǒn Dynasty and Korean geographic records, this study reveals an increase in the exchange of geographic knowledge between Ming China and Chosǒn Korea during the late 16th Century. When the Ming official Song Yingchang, who was in charge of the military affairs in Korea, directed the production of Huayi Yanhai Tu (the Coastal Map of China and the Barbarians), he relied not only on his accumulated knowledge but also his direct experience in Korea. This led to the timeliness and accuracy of this map, showing a strategic transformation of the Ming government’s management of the Bohai and Yellow Sea region. There were profound implications behind his selection and handling of specific geographic information. The display and interpretation of seemingly minor information could be effective tools for presenting political stances and military thoughts.

Settlement pattern is an understudied topic in historical settlement geography. The settlement pattern of Jingsheng Village in Lingshi County in Shanxi Province had experienced three stages of change: the initial development of the gullies and lanes from the late Yuan Dynasty to the early Ming Dynasty, the boundary expansion and internal expansion from the late Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty, the filling of the settlement pattern in the late Qing Dynasty and the “southward invasion” across the river. Factors such as geographical environment, clan power, war and banditry, national policies had all played an important role in the development and evolution of Jingsheng Village settlement pattern. The case study of Jingsheng Village shows that the formation and development of settlement pattern is a historical process of dynamic change, and the establishment history of settlement temples and landmark buildings has become an important index for investigation. Research on the pattern of rural settlements will be one of the trends of future rural historical geography studies in China.

Modern maps drawn using scientific surveying and mapping technology are precious historical geographical data source, directly showing land cover information in the past. Digitization is a necessary way to extract the historical land cover and its changes from old maps. This paper proposes an old map digitization method based on machine learning and image morphology analysis, and takes the “Eastern China: Shanghai” map as an example to elaborate its implementation process and verify the effectiveness. Results show that the method can fully utilize the color information and morphological information in the map, and extract the surface water information quickly and accurately in a semi-automatic manner. The proposed method can be applied to the digital extraction of land cover information with color characteristics in most color modern maps. It shows great potential to provide both data and method basis for accurately restoring land cover changes and understanding the evolution in man-land relationship since modern times.

From June to August in the 46th year of Kangxi (1707), there was no continuous precipitation in the Yangtze River Delta, which caused a large-scale drought. Based on the quantified scores of the hazard at county level, the spread of the drought was restored. It was mainly distributed between 30°-33°N, formed a serious disaster center in the Taihu Lake Basin.The daily precipitation sequence from May to August in the Yangtze River Delta was reconstructed by using Yang Dapiao diary. Through the analysis, it is concluded that the reason for the drought is that the subtropical high pressure is stronger than usual in that year, and the its northward movement is also coming earlier, resulting in the rapid northward movement of the rain belt and the abnormality in the Meiyu period. In addition, the drought is strongly related with solar activity and ENSO events.

Goulan Shan was one of the most important landmarks on the route between China and Java in the Yuan-Ming Period. Scholars usually believe that Goulan Shan is located to the southwest of Kalimantan Island and known as Gelam Island now. However, newly discovered Chinese inscriptions in Indonesia indicate that Serutu Island is where Goulan Shan was located. Through comparative analysis of geographic remote sensing data and traditional documents, the records on Goulan Shan are roughly consistent with the geographical environment of Serutu Island and its surrounding areas, but are quite different from that of Gelam Island. The invasion by the Yuan Dynasty into Java indirectly contributed to the prosperity of Serutu Island in late Yuan and early Ming, while the policy of maritime embargo in Ming Dynasty and the depletion of animal resources may be the main reasons for the decline of the island's status after the mid-Ming.

During the Tang Dynasty, there are two Shaoyang yards within the Daming Palace city and both are located in the vicinity of the inner court where the emperors reside. The West Shaoyang Yard is not in line with the tradition of the location of the crown prince’s palace, which prioritize the East, but it can receive the attention from emperor, empress and eunuchs because of its better location. In the period of the Late Tang, the eunuchs find it easier to control the West Shaoyang Yard, hence the emperor and crown prince, because it is close to Neishibiesheng and the barracks of the imperial guards just outside the Jiuxian Gate. The East Shaoyang Yard not only includes the eastern part of the Menxiasheng, but also a quarter inside the Chongming Gate, and the later is the real abode for the crown prince. The Eastern location and the fact that most of the successions of the throne are not from father to son contribute to ascending status of the East Shaoyang Yard as an important ritual space for the crown prince before taking up the throne.

It is possible to make a comparative calculation of the distances and routes recorded in ⅡT0214①∶130 and ⅤT1611③∶39, two Han dynasty slips from Xuanquan. The post at the easternmost point of Jiuquan Prefecture recorded in ⅡT0214①∶130 was not Biaoshi, but to the west of it; Biaoshi was a county belonged to Zhangye Prefecture at that time. The jurisdiction of Wuwei Prefecture recorded in ⅤT1611③∶39 was not in Guzang, but possibly in Fanhe. The main line of the “Southeast”courier route as seen in ⅤT1611③∶39 passed Tianshui and connected Anding, which was basically the conventionally acknowledged “North Route”from Chang’an to Hexi. This route also had a branch to Jincheng. Based on the above conclusions, the features of ⅡT0214①∶130 can be roughly reconstructed. The two slips of ⅡT0214①∶130 and ⅤT1611③∶39 commonly display a portion of the courier routes and administrative divisions of Hexi at a certain point in the Western Han dynasty.

The Northwest Frontiers Military and Political Documents from the Song Dynasty is an important Heishuicheng document of Chinese secular literature collected in Russia. It has 109 pages, covering topics including grain and grass loan, Immigration, personal lawsuit, military supplies application, etc. Some of the geographical information contained in this document are not to be found in traditional historical records of the Song and Tangut (West Xia) frontiers. Based on analyzing the relevant geographic terms and information, the author finds out the new situation and new problems including the administrative system, crop transmission, traffics, city-village system and so on, in this paper. They are further used to enact the mutual confirmation between excavated documents and traditional historical records, to complete the missing parts in traditional historical records, and to enhance the understanding of the historical geography and social conditions of the Song and Tangut frontiers.

The inner city of the Zhengzhou was also where the center of ancient Zhengzhou Shang City had been located. In the past, researchers thought that when Guan Xian (管县) was set up in Han dynasties, a new northern city wall was added. However, it did not accord with the historical records. Within the limit of the inner wall of the Zhengzhou Shang City, ordinary residential remains of Han periods showed no obvious rural-urban distinction. The new city wall was built during the Tang Dynasty rather than Han periods. The settlements in the Zhengzhou Shang City area in Han dynasties were under the control of the Xian level, playing an important role in the regional transport network. This study is also of interest to understanding the historical changes of the urban form of ancient Zhengzhou.