卷三 · Volume III
History
How a town’s name became the name of a capital.
Lin’an’s history turns on a single surname: Qian. Amid the chaos of the late Tang, Qian Liu of Lin’an founded the kingdom of Wuyue and kept his corner of the country at peace for eighty years; his grandson handed the realm to the Song without a war and left a family precept that has lasted a millennium. Later, the Southern Song borrowed the very name “Lin’an” for its capital — and only in our own time has the name returned to the land it came from.
852 · Tang dynasty
Qian Liu is born in Lin’an
Qian Liu was born to a farming family in Shijing township, in what is now central Lin’an. Legend says strange signs attended his birth and his father meant to abandon him; his grandmother saved him, and villagers nicknamed him “Poliu” — kept by grandma. A well by that name still exists in town.
He smuggled salt as a youth, then took up arms. In an age of collapse, the man from Lin’an fought his way to rule over the whole of Liangzhe.
907 · Five Dynasties
Wuyue: peace held close
In 907 Qian Liu was enfeoffed as King of Wuyue, founding a kingdom with its capital at Hangzhou. While the Central Plains burned, Wuyue heard no drums of war for decades. The Qians walled the Qiantang tides, dredged West Lake, and built waterworks — the groundwork of Hangzhou’s cityscape was laid in those years.
“Guard the land, keep the people at peace, serve the Central Plain” was his state policy: hold your own ground, and always acknowledge the northern court. The choice spared the wealthy southeast the wars of the Five Dynasties.
978 · Northern Song
The peaceful handover
In 978 Qian Liu’s grandson Qian Chu, honouring his grandfather’s dying instruction, offered the kingdom — thirteen prefectures, eighty-six counties — to the Song without a fight. A whole realm, unified without a single battle.
The classic Hundred Family Surnames opens “Zhao, Qian, Sun, Li” — Qian ranked second only to the imperial surname, the Song’s tribute to what Wuyue had spared its people.
A thousand-year precept
The Qian family precept
Qian Liu left a family precept whose heart is one line: “Seek nothing that profits only yourself; what profits all under heaven, you must do.”
A millennium on, Qian descendants include Qian Xuesen, Qian Sanqiang, Qian Zhongshu — a family’s culture outliving dynasties. The Qian Kings’ Mausoleum and the Wuyue royal tomb archaeological park in Lin’an still tell the story.
1138 — 2017
The travels of a name
When the Southern Song made Hangzhou its capital, it raised the city to “Lin’an Prefecture” — and the two characters became the name of an imperial capital, standing in verse for that city of “hills beyond hills and towers beyond towers.” The name was away for nearly eight centuries.
In 1996 Lin’an became a city, and in 2017 a district of Hangzhou. The name has come home.
852 · Tang dynasty
Force to secure a realm, letters to sustain a family, wisdom to know when to yield — Lin’an’s first answer to history.