Wu-chiang

What is not mentioned in the cases of Ch'ang-shu and Ning-po is clearly explained in the history of Wu-chiang county in southern Kiangsu whose population may be seen in Table 7.[...]While Ch'ang-shu and Wu-chiang represented a minority of the localities in the southeast registering a mildly increasing or stationary population, most of the available late Ming southeastern local histories registered a steady decline.

1959, Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953, Harvard University Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 18–19

The division of hsien cities, as opposed to sheng or fu cities, into two administrative units was unique to Kiangsu. One example is Wu-chiang hsien city....An exceptional example of flourishing nonadministrative cities was the above-mentioned Wu-chiang hsien on the Grand Canal south of Soochow near the Chekiang border. After the settlements in Chen-tze hsien were split off from this hsien during the Yung-cheng reign, Wu-chiang was left with four chen, five shih (interchangeable with chi meaning market) and 175 villages for a population of 247,000....Also southeast in Wu-chiang hsien was Sheng-tze chen, formerly a village of 50 to 60 households in the early Ming period, which first became a shih owing to trade in silk thread and later was reputed to have increased its population a hundred times, becoming the largest chen in the hsien.

1973, Gilbert Rozman, Urban Networks in Chʻing China and Tokugawa Japan, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 220