The Ming Shipyard Recorded at Ashhada

Ashhada’s river cliff preserves two Ming inscriptions with different levels of detail. The earlier inscription names the official only as Liu; the larger text identifies him as Liu Qing, a commander of the Liaodong regional command. It records three returns to this stretch of the Songhua: Yongle 18 (1420), Hongxi 1 (1425) and Xuande 7 (1432). The same inscription says a Dragon King temple was founded during the first visit and rebuilt during the third. Instead of one dedicatory event, the text sets down three successive returns to the river and the temple’s two building phases.

The cliff therefore records recurring work rather than a single dedication. Its carved sequence joins a named official, three campaigns and a local temple. The provincial gazetteer places the shipbuilding area near the inscriptions, while the stone itself records the official missions and their dates. It is a compact account of how a riverbank became legible to a distant administration.

A Jilin City Government history account places a shipbuilding base in Jilin in 1409, linking the Liaodong and Nurgan regional commands. It says the base built vessels to carry officials and soldiers, grain, rewards and tribute, and also served as a transfer point for personnel and supplies. The provincial gazetteer’s account of Liu Qing’s three journeys on the Songhua gives this work a local frame. Read together, the records connect boatbuilding with the movement of people and provisions along the river, while the inscriptions and the wider administrative history retain distinct evidentiary roles.

Together, the inscriptions preserve the local sequence of journeys and temple-building, while the city account places that work within a wider river network for moving people and supplies.

The historical name “Shipyard” belongs to more than one chapter of Jilin’s river history. The provincial gazette account says the Ming worksite gradually disappeared amid warfare and the early Qing restrictions on settlement. In 1656, the Qing government again built ships at Jilin, this time to patrol the river frontier; the account associates the later name Shipyard with that Qing installation as well. These were separate episodes of state boatbuilding, not one workshop continuously operating from the Ming into the Qing.

That later history helps explain why a place-name can outlast its buildings while gathering new meanings. Ashhada’s inscriptions preserve the Ming campaigns of Liu Qing; the later Jilin shipyard belonged to a different administration and a new military setting. Reading the records together makes the river a route repeatedly used for transport and defense, while keeping the two shipbuilding histories distinct.

The inscriptions’ modern history is visible in a sequence of conservation decisions. In 1990, a municipal protection project reinforced the carved stone, built a guard house and metal railings, and added glass covers. A history display hall opened in 2002. The site entered China’s sixth national batch of key cultural heritage sites in 2006, and a measured survey and protection plan followed in 2010. These dates mark a change from a river cliff remembered through local history to a monument managed through public heritage institutions.

The protective frame also changed how the stone could be encountered. Reinforcement addressed the cliff’s exposure; rails and covers set a boundary around the inscriptions; the display hall placed them within a wider account of shipbuilding. The Jilin City Ming and Qing Shipyard Site Museum was formally established in 2012. Its institutional history extends the story beyond the Ming record, showing how the inscriptions became objects of conservation, interpretation and civic memory.