The Whole Story of the Shanhe Weirs Water Case in the Baishaxi Stream Basin of Jinhua in the Late Qing Dynasty

In the late Qing Dynasty, the 36 Weirs of Baishaxi Stream in Jinhua fell into frequent disputes. A particularly intense struggle for the water rights (legal or customary entitlements that determine how individuals or groups can access, use, and control water resources) of the Shanhe Weirs erupted between the Yin and Yu lineages downstream, turning local documents such as county gazetteers (xianzhi) and temple gazetteers (miaozhi) into a battlefield for power. The Yu lineage, whose water rights had been gradually eroded due to a conflict over the Yushan Weir, faced mounting survival pressures. Seizing the opportunity presented by their clansman Yu Jinfu’s role as a co-editor of the Guangxu-era Jinhua County Gazetteer, they leveraged the compilation of the Water Conservancy Gazetteer to tie the Yushan and Zhongji Weirs to their lineage’s interests, attempting to solidify their water rights through this official text. The Yin lineage, after winning the lawsuit over the Shanhe Weirs, found themselves unable to alter the already published county gazetteer. Instead, they turned to folk documents such as the Zhaoli Temple Gazetteer, using handwritten copies and printed editions to reinforce the legitimacy of their water rights claims. This dispute was not merely a struggle for water resources but also a microcosm of the weakening state governance and intensifying involutionary competition (a form of intensified competition in which increasing effort or input yields diminishing returns, often leading to stagnation rather than progress) in local society during the late Qing, reflecting the broader resource dilemmas faced by late imperial China.