Xishui County () is a county of eastern

Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The p ...

province, People's Republic of China. The county extends over an area of and is under the administration of

Huanggang Huanggang is a prefecture-level city in easternmost Hubei Province, China. It is situated to the north of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and is bounded in the north by the Dabie Mountains and is named after Mount Huanggang. It borde ...

City.

History

Xishui was a center of revolutionary activity during the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on main ...

. In 1922, an underground group was formed to try to undermine the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Ta ...

. Between 1926 and 1949, thousands of locals lost their lives in the struggle. Famous persons whose ancestral home was Xishui County: *

Wen Yiduo Wen Yiduo (; 24 November 189915 July 1946) was a Chinese poet and scholar known for his nationalistic poetry. Wen was assassinated by the Kuomintang in 1946. Life Wen Yiduo was born Wén Jiāhuá () on 24 November 1899 in what is now Xishui ...

( Chinese: 聞一多), famous writer of China. *

Yang Jisheng (historian) Yang Jisheng (born November 1940)

( Chinese traditional: 楊繼繩), the author of Tomb: Great famine of China: 1959-1962( Chinese name: < 墓碑:中國1959-1962年三年大饑荒> ) * Xu Fuguan, a Chinese historian and philosopher, notable for Confucian studies

Geography

Administrative divisions

Xishui County administers:

Climate

Natural Resources

Xishui county has large proven reserves of ore, including

magnetite Magnetite is a mineral and one of the main iron ores, with the chemical formula Fe2+Fe3+2O4. It is one of the oxides of iron, and is ferrimagnetic; it is attracted to a magnet and can be magnetized to become a permanent magnet itself. With ...

vanadium Vanadium is a chemical element with the symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an oxide layer ( pass ...

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pink ...

pyrite The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Iron, FeSulfur, S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic Luster (mineralogy), lust ...

, yellow

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class ...

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

potassium Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin '' kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmos ...

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical f ...

, green

jade Jade is a mineral used as jewellery or for ornaments. It is typically green, although may be yellow or white. Jade can refer to either of two different silicate minerals: nephrite (a silicate of calcium and magnesium in the amphibole group ...

, and

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...

Economy

The very first

agricultural cooperative An agricultural cooperative, also known as a farmers' co-op, is a cooperative in which farmers pool their resources in certain areas of activity. A broad typology of agricultural cooperatives distinguishes between agricultural service cooperati ...

province was established at Xishui in 1952, as impoverished

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasa ...

s pooled their land and cattle to create one large farm. In the first year, the commune increased its production by one third. The commune also expanded fresh-water fish and

lotus root ''Nelumbo nucifera'', also known as sacred lotus, Laxmi lotus, Indian lotus, or simply lotus, is one of two extant species of aquatic plant in the family Nelumbonaceae. It is sometimes colloquially called a water lily, though this more often re ...

cultivation, and began planting two crops of rice per year. In 1956, the Xishui cooperative was recognized as an exemplary “national production growth model.” A major

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

-control and

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been devel ...

reservoir was completed in 1961 and it began generating

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describe ...

the following year. This again became a national model for other villages to follow.

Yangtze Flooding

Xishui is subject to flooding from the

Yangtze River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows ...

. In 1996, the main dike wall shielding the village from the Yangtze broke in several places, endangering the entire county. Emergency support personnel from

Qichun County Qichun County () is a county of eastern Hubei province, People's Republic of China. It is under the administration of Huanggang City. Qichun is the birthplace of famous herbalist Li Shizhen, who was born and lived in Qizhou town, on the southern ...

and Wuxue City were required to help deal with the emergency. Since then, the dike was widened and raised in height.

References

Xishui Government websites
(Chinese) Counties of Hubei Huanggang {{Hubei-geo-stub