Stone Tablets of Jinkui County Yamen

Stone Tablets of Jinkui County Yamen

The Stone Tablets of Jinkui County Yamen are a protected cultural relic site of Wuxi City.

The Stone Tablets of Jinkui County Yamen are located within the premises of the current Chong’an District People’s Government at No. 82 Qianjie Street, Wuxi City. They are embedded in the walls between the main and secondary gates of the former Jinkui County Yamen.

There are a total of sixteen surviving stone tablets. The earliest dates from the ninth year of the Yongzheng reign in the Qing Dynasty (1731), and the latest from the thirty-first year of the Guangxu reign (1905). Most of the inscriptions contain explicit regulations on commerce, handicrafts, hired labor, and guild systems, as well as records on land surveys and tax collection. Among them, the “Jinkui County Proclamation on Land Tax Procedures,” “Jinkui County Regulation Prohibiting the Addition of Fruit and Vegetable Trades, Allowing Itinerant and Local Farmers Transporting Goods by Boat to Sell Through Brokers,” “Jinkui County Regulation Permitting Porters Hired by Merchants to Transport Goods and Forbidding Monopolistic Competition,” and “Jinkui County Kiln Owners’ Agreement on Prohibitory Rules” are all fully transcribed in the Selected Stone Tablet Materials from Jiangsu Province Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Three other tablets are listed in the catalog of that publication.

In November 1983, they were designated as a municipal-level cultural relics protection unit by the Wuxi Municipal People’s Government.