The county where three provinces meet

Rucheng sits in the southeastern corner of Chenzhou, where the borders of Hunan, Guangdong and Jiangxi come together, and it belongs culturally to the Hakka region, with Hakka spoken across the county. Its rivers part company in three directions: the Ou and the Zhe flow east into the Dongjiang and on to the Xiang, the Jilong runs into the Gan, and the Jiulong and Chengxi run south into the North River and the Pearl, so the county carries the saying that the rooster crows in three provinces while the water pours into three rivers. Mountains cover about four-fifths of the county, and the terrain is a weave of ridges, hills and basins at the southern end of the Luoxiao range, with rain on some one hundred and eighty days of the year and a long frost-free season. It is a place defined by its position, a corner where three provinces and three river systems all touch, and its history has been shaped by that meeting more than by any single town. Its hills receive rain through much of the year and stay free of frost for most of it, so the slopes are green.

The county's one famous building remembers a philosopher rather than a soldier. Early in the Song dynasty the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhou Dunyi served as magistrate of Guiyang, the county that then covered what are now Guidong and Rucheng, and his tenure was remembered as successful. Later the people of Rucheng built the Lianxi Academy, named for Zhou Dunyi's own title, the Lian stream, to commemorate him, and the academy has been repeatedly ruined and rebuilt across the centuries; the one that now stands in the west of the county town was raised on the site of a Republican-era building. So the county's monument is a school honouring the man whose writings founded Neo-Confucianism, a reminder that Rucheng's old administration was part of the same scholarly world that produced the philosophy of the south, and that the county once governed by the philosopher still keeps his name in brick. The Lianxi name, taken from the stream Zhou Dunyi honoured, links the county to the philosopher's home in Dao County and to the school of learning he founded, and the academy in Rucheng is one of several places across China that bear it.

Rucheng's living comes from its ground. Forests cover some seventy-two percent of the county, and it is one of Hunan's important forestry bases, with the climate and soil suited to trees. Beneath the hills lie minerals, and tungsten, iron, coal and limestone are the county's main products, with tungsten and the processing of ores now a pillar of its industry. The county's rivers fall steeply, so small hydropower has grown quickly, and the earth itself runs hot: Reshui Town holds the largest geothermal field in the six provinces of south-central China, and its hot springs have become an ecological tourism site. The Yao people form a substantial minority here, with several Yao townships, and the She people a smaller one. It is a working border county, its wealth in timber, ore, water and heat rather than in any single monument. The hot water of Reshui is the county's most distinctive gift, a geothermal field counted the largest in the six provinces of south-central China, and it has become the county's best-known draw for visitors, a working borderland whose true wealth lies in its ground.