Huai River

While not as famous or significant as the Yellow River or the Yangtze, the Huai River, which runs to the south of the former, and north of the latter, constitutes the traditional dividing line between northern and southern China.

During the Southern Song Dynasty, the Huai constituted the border between the Song and the Jin Dynasty of the Jurchens.

In the Ming Dynasty, the Huai was home to dockworks where boats were built for transporting official shipments of grain on the Grand Canal. As with much in Ming administration, these dockworks were not coordinated or overseen in a unified way; instead, the thirty-yard wide dockyard was divided into eighty-two areas, and bore no coordinated support services to transport supplies and materials from storehouses, scattered across a two-and-a-half mile stretch, and the boats being built.

References

• Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance, Yale University Press (1981), 161.