Song Li opens the Huitong Canal
The Ming History records that Minister of Works Song Li opened the Huitong Canal.
What this does and does not establish
明史/卷6, Wikisource revision 2594619; annual heading 永樂九年 at line 209. The canal is the explicitly named physical object of 開. The brief entry does not establish the duration of work or a separate completion ceremony. No relevant variant appears in the supplied apparatus.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Environment, health and technology
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- 永樂九年二月己未
- How we use it
- Year-level placement is limited to the dated source entry.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Read ming006.wikitext lines 209–232, including the following month's separate dredging entry. Compared calendar_headers and sinica-1410-12-31.html and sinica-1411-12-31.html lines 31–32: both concern Ming Chengzu, advancing from Yongle 8, month 12 day 6 at AD 1410-12-31 to Yongle 9, month 12 day 17 at AD 1411-12-31. Yongle 9 month 2 falls within Julian AD 1411. Original quotation begins at line 213, character 5505.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Ming shi (History of Ming), basic annals
Zhang Tingyu et al., Qing court historians
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
己未，工部尚書宋禮開會通河。AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
On jiwei, Minister of Works Song Li opened the Huitong Canal.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: 明史/卷6 https://zh.wikisource.org/w/index.php?oldid=2594619 Public-domain historical original. Wikisource contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Attribute the fixed transcription and share adapted excerpts alike. Project working translation.
Exact source version
c0445750dd90bcc9273495bd9ec75afbfbb932fd208bc699fcc9ad1e6ca7387cChecks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-07. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s1401_annals_1410_1411_2
Exact revision fingerprint
5fe925aa7e206975215db5f4e40772179794d686f07798133d383a5fab2a641c