History

Engchoon is currently a county under the jurisdiction of Quanzhou District in Fujian Province, China. As early as the late Neolithic period, there were already people active in Engchoon, and its level of civilization was in the leading position in Fujian. The Neolithic period, archaeologically speaking, is the final stage of the Stone Age, characterized by the predominance of polished stone tools and pottery production, starting roughly around 10,000 years ago and ending anywhere from over 7,000 to over 2,000 years ago. This means that human activity in Engchoon dates back over 2,000 years ago.

According to the ” Engchoon Surname Records,” among the over one thousand clans in Engchoon, some clans have a history of over a thousand years. For instance, the Wai Shan Yunfeng Lin clan, during the Tang Dynasty Dachun period (890-891 AD), was founded by Lin Wenjun from Yongtai who entered Engchoon’s Wai Shan Township, Yunfeng Village. Additionally, the Chen clan from Penghu Xi had settled in Chen Yan and Xi Xi (Jun Dou Village, Penghu Town) during the Sui Dynasty. The ancestor of the Zheng clan from Dongmen Pengxiang, Taocheng, Zheng Keyuan, was dispatched to guard Taolin Field (now Engchoon County) in the second year of the Tang Dynasty Guangqi (886 AD). These pieces of evidence confirm that Yongchun’s development dates back over a thousand years.

Taolin Field was elevated from a field to a county in the fourth year of the Changxing period of the Later Tang Dynasty (933 AD), initially named “Taoyuan County,” and renamed ” Engchoon County” in the third year of the Tianfu period of the Later Jin Dynasty (938 AD). During the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, it was all under the jurisdiction of Quanzhou. Until the twelfth year of the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty (1734), Engchoon County was elevated by the Qing government to a direct jurisdiction prefecture, incorporating Dehua from Quanzhou Prefecture and Datian from Yanping Prefecture into the jurisdiction of Engchoon Prefecture. It was not until 1913 that the Nationalist Government abolished Engchoon Prefecture and restored it to Engchoon County. In 2012, cultural workers in Sanban Town, Dehua County, discovered a boundary marker from the Qing Dynasty period between Engchoon and Dehua counties in Jinshan Village, providing historical evidence of Engchoon ‘s former elevation to a direct jurisdiction prefecture.