Analysis:
Why is Shi Qi called the Iron City?
In the 22nd year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1 152), the court made Xiangshan a county.
The first important thing after the establishment of the county is to build a slightly decent county for this island that used to make a living from fishing and salt industry.
Where is the best location for the county seat? Of course, it is a place with relatively developed economy, relatively concentrated residents, a certain scale and good development prospects.
In Xiangshan County 10 townships, Chang 'an Township (now Xiangzhou, Zhuhai City) benefited from fishing salt and developed earlier. The famous Jindou saltworks is one of the top ten saltworks in the South China Sea, which has made a lot of profits (the resources of the former Bai Ji silver mine have been gradually exhausted due to years of mining, and although gold and crystal veins have been found nearby, the reserves are not large, the grade is very low, and there is not much mining value). But just because it is a fishing and salt producing area, it is difficult to become a central city.
In fact, only Fengle Township (now sanxiang town) and Renhou Township (now Shi Qi Township) can be considered. Most of the others have just landed, and the beaches that Lian Gang has rowed from other counties are not competitive at all.
The first place to choose is Fengle Township, which is today's Qiaotou, Pinglan and Wushi areas. The plain is vast, with nearly a thousand families. It is the only place for the north-south land transportation of Xiangshan Island, and it is also close to the exits of Haotan (now Tangjia) and Haojing 'ao (now Macau).
Another choice is Renhouli (now Shi Qi) in Renhou Township, which is also a vast plain with nearly a thousand families. It is the hub of land and water transportation in the county and the starting point of land access to Guangzhou. Chen Tianlun, Chen Tianjue and Tian Chen, three outstanding members of the Chen family, enjoy a high reputation in this township. Chen Tianjue is a current village official, acting as the newly established county magistrate of Xiangshan County.
Chen Tianjue invited the villagers' elders to discuss, and the representatives of Fengle Township and Renhou Township each held their own words, and they fought fiercely. Chen Tianjue is a kind fellow countryman, so it is inconvenient to talk about it at the moment. As a Beijing official, he is used to seeing problems with a broad vision and a long-term perspective. He knows in his heart that the county seat is located near the mountains and waters (at this time, the sea area between Xiangshan County and Nanhai County has gradually turned into land, which is later Shunde, and Shiqihai has evolved into a river), and it has actually become a kind township with the state capital, which is of course much more advantageous than Fengle Township, which lacks the benefits of water transportation. In order to end the endless debate, he offered an oldest but most effective "magic weapon", that is, Feng Shui theory. He told the squires that there was an old saying: "The heavy soil is the most expensive". We can weigh the soil of the two places and choose the place with heavy soil to build the city! Everyone agreed.
According to legend, Chen Tianjue played a little trick beforehand. He secretly sent people to mix iron sand in the soil samples of Renhou Township. The next "weighing soil" was of course that the soil mixed with iron sand was heavier, so he agreed to build a city in Renhou Township. This story spread later, and people passed it on as a much-told story, calling the newly-built county town "Iron City". -The above is the famous legend of "weighing soil".
Yao Xiaozi, the county magistrate of Dongguan who was in charge of Xiangshan, is very supportive of building the city. He personally came forward to mobilize Liu Bi, a captain of Xiangshan who now lives in Yongzhou, to donate a large ancestral land (now Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall) located in the center of the future county to build the county government. At the same time, Chen Tianjue hired Liang Xifu and his son, a very kind Li Quyong Township architect, to build the city, and decided to break ground on another day. It was completed in the twenty-fourth year of Shaoxing (1 154) two years after the establishment of Xiangshan County, and was temporarily stationed in the temporary county government of Xiangshan Zhai (now Xiangzhou, Zhuhai). Since then, it has officially moved to Tiecheng.