P'u-t'ien

— Every child of Pʻu-tʻien knows that the fertile plain, girdled by mountains and facing the Yellow Sea, was once a great salt marsh, for Pʻu-tʻien means "Salt Grass Fields." It was Lady Fourth Daughter, a Chinese girl of the Sung Dynasty, a thousand years ago, who dreamed of building a dam to hold back the salt tides, and to send the fresh life-giving waters of the River of Playful Fairies into a system of canals threading the plain. Thus would the salt marshes be redeemed into rice fields for the feeding of countless villages. The fair, high-walled county seat came to be named Hing-hwa, "Transformed to Flourishing," because of her gift of Fertile Fields. Being a child of Pʻu-tʻien myself I, too, have always known the lovely legends about Lady Fourth Daughter of the family of Ching.