1: A Virtuous Cycle of Water: The Hydrological Turn in the 1342 Gazetteer of Ningbo

In the Gazetteer of Siming Continued under the Zhizheng Era (Zhizheng Siming xu zhi, 1342), compilers represented all the hydraulic structures of Siming (present Ningbo, Zhejiang province) as an integrated system. These local officials recognized how waters in the region could flow into one beneficent circulation through dams, sluices, and dikes. They discerned this great potential particularly within a water network that channeled abundant runoff from surrounding mountains into the vital storage of Lake Crescent (in the provincial capital). Similar to its thirteenth-century predecessors, the 1342 gazetteer distinguishes the extensive network converging on Lake Crescent. Resembling its immediate forerunner, the gazetteer identifies hydraulic structures in a special section, “Rivers and Canals” (hequ). Nonetheless, this gazetteer is the first to trace the continuous movement of water between mists, rains, rivers, lakes, and tides across county boundaries. To its compilers, the detailed records of hydraulic structures in earlier local gazetteers pointed to a regular water cycle immanent in the local landscape, but the traditional method of organizing hydraulic structures by type and by county obscured this virtuous cycle. They therefore decided to reorient water affairs in Siming by arranging hydraulic structures into the interwoven networks within an integrated water infrastructure. This hydrological turn in the 1342 gazetteer of Siming suggests that local gazetteers were not mere accretive records of government affairs within administrative boundaries, but successive investigations into the cosmic order and forces behind such affairs. Local gazetteers, in other words, revealed truths about local landscapes.