P'u-t'ien

See also: Putien

English

Map including P'U-T'IEN (HINGHWA) (AMS, 1954)

Etymology

From the Wade–Giles romanization of the Mandarin 莆田 (Pútián), Wade-Giles romanization: Pʻu²-tʻien².

Proper noun

P'u-t'ien

1. Alternative form of Putian
   • 1931, Mary Brewster Hollister, 同澤靈傳‎^[2], Cambridge, Massachusetts: Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions, pages 11-12:

     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.

   • 1967, Wolfram Eberhard, Guilt and Sin in Traditional China‎^[3], University of California Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 58:

     Mu-lien was a pious Buddhist who attempted to save his mother from the punishments in hell, as we heard above (p. 25), and who, according to some traditions, eventually became Ti-tsang.⁷⁵ He, too, had several temples. In our survey, the oldest one was in Hsia-p'u (Fukien), renamed with his name in 954, rebuilt in 972, and for the last time, in 1915. There was still another temple for him in Hsia-p'u, but undated. Otherwise, we have only a 1608 temple for him in P'u-t'ien (Fukien) and an undated temple in Hsiang-shan (Kuangtung).

   • 1980, Judith A. Berling, The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao-en‎^[4], New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 62:

     Lin Chao-en was born in 1517 in P'u-t'ien, Fukien, the second son of his father Wan-jen.¹ P'u-t'ien was known for the success of its sons in the government examinations.

   • 2004, Hugh R. Clark, “Reinventing the Genealogy: Innovation in Kinship Practice in the Tenth to Eleventh Centuries”, in Thomas H. C. Lee, editor, The New and the Multiple: Sung Senses of the Past‎^[5], Chinese University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 248:

     All the cases I will examine come from P'u-t'ien district. Until the early Sung, P'u-t'ien was part of Ch'üan-chou prefecture; in 983 a new prefecture, Hsing-hua Commandery (Hsing-hua chün), was established with P'u-t'ien as the prefectural capital. The district is located on the lower reaches of the Mu-lan River, the principle river system between the Chin River of Ch'üan-chou to the south and the Min River of Fu-chou to the north. No doubt because of their proximity to the latter, which had been the social, cultural, and political heart of Fu-chien for many centuries, most of the elite kin groups in P'u-t'ien claimed to be collateral branches of prominent Fu-chou kin groups who had settled in P'u-t'ien no later than the early T'ang. Collectively the P'u-t'ien elite claimed the most ancient pedigree among the Min-nan elite. It is, therefore, not surprising that they claim the oldest genealogical tradition as well.

Translations

Putian — see Putian