Template:Did you know nominations/Li County, Gansu

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Miyagawa (talk) 22:21, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Li County, Gansu

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... that the first Duke of Qin inherited his father's land at Lixian when his older brother Shifu chose to dedicate his life to war against the barbarians who killed their grandfather?

Reviewed: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV series)

5x expanded by LlywelynII (talk). Self nominated at 13:38, 6 December 2013 (UTC).

Alt1 hook: ... that Lixian, commanding a valley in Gansu between the Zhou dynasty's Wei River heartland and the northern tributaries of the Yangtze, was the original fief of the dukes of Qin?

Article has been expanded more than five-fold, it is well-written and well-sourced (AGF on the sources, as my Chinese is too rudimentary to verify them), QPQ done. I would be ready to pass this, except for a few quibbles: one, if the "which" tag for Xiang's title could be removed, either by adding the title or by verifying that the title is unknown; two, per supplementary rule D2, there should be a reference for the county's later names; more importantly, three, the narration of the country's history seems to stop at the 8th century BC. Why? Is there absolutely nothing that can be said about the region in the next 2,500 years? Constantine ✍ 22:00, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks and thanks for the notice on my talk page.

Regarding (1), I'll look again but so far it seems like everyone else is just cribbing Sima Qian. He says that they went from being attached lords (presumably without status, despite several of the ancestors being called counts) to being feudal lords (which could technically be any of the ranks of the Chinese nobility). Since the later lords of Qin were dukes, they posthumously called these ancestors dukes as well but I can't find anyone able to explicitly say whether that was a promotion (which was a normal thing in China: some of the ancestors before this grant were called dukes as well) or their actual rank during life. So that's where we are on that. I'd rather leave the tag so other editors know to help but, if it's an issue for you guys, I'll clean up the phrasing.

Regarding (2) and (3), I got those names from the unsourced entry at the Chinese Wikipedia and those name changes essentially are the rest of the city's history. It was important in the Shang and Zhou as the border between "China" and the peoples of the Yangtze and Sichuan valleys and, as such, it served as one of the capitals of Qin. Talking about that capital was the only reason to expand the rest of the article in the first place but there's not really enough to justify spinning out a separate article. After Qin began expanding, its capital moved to (essentially) Xi'an and its armies moved into Sichuan: the borderlands weren't as important any more. So, essentially, the name changes are it's subsequent history. I can try to find some more info on the royal tombs nearby and their recent excavation but there's a separate article that should be made on that since it's a big protected area now.

If I can't find a source on those name changes (apart from Zh wiki, which doesn't count) do I really need to remove them until the DYK is over? — LlywelynII 00:49, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I'd be willing to assume AGF here on the subsequent names; my problem rather is that as it is now the article seems incomplete. If you could explain what you have told me here in the article, then it'd be OK. On the title, if you can clarify the phrasing so that the tag is not needed, all the better (and our readers will learn something, too). Otherwise, just remove the tag, it is rather trivial a matter. Otherwise, as I said above, well done! Cheers, Constantine ✍ 10:20, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm really not sure what you expect to see from such a backwater (once the Qin capital moved), but I'll poke around on Google Books for awhile and see if I can find some more (or at least a source for its restoration to county status under the Ming). — LlywelynII 16:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Could I get fresh eyes on this? I really think it's an almost absurd amount of detail for a Chinese county article at this point. ^_^

(In fact, I'll probably spin off some of the Qin details to linked family and dynasty pages just for space after this appears.) — LlywelynII 09:50, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I saw you active in expanding the article and was waiting for your work to be done. It is indeed very comprehensive now. I am happy to sign this off as ready to go. Constantine ✍ 20:48, 17 December 2013 (UTC)