Qizhou

  About one hour's sailing east of Huangshi, the industrial and iron ore mining city below Wuhan, is the small town of Qizhou. Though it has a history of 1,000 years, it is famous as the home town of Li Shizhen (1518--93), a Ming--dynasty herbalist and Physician. After practicing Chinese medicine in his youth, Li spent 30 years rewriting and categorizing ancient Chinese medical books, traveling far and wide in search of specimens. His treatise formed 52 scrolls, with almost 2,000 entries. Sadly, he died before receiving recognition. However, his son presented a copy of Li's work to Emperor Wauli (1573--1620), a patron of scholarship. The emperor, much pleased with the work, ordered its wide distribution. Li Shizhen's classical works are the basis of traditional Chinese medical practice today and have been translated into a number of foreign languages.

  The graves of Li Shizhen and his wife are situated at Rain Lake, north of the wn,surrounded by gardens of medicinal herbs.

  The local bamboo is used for making summer bed mats, and flutes made from this bamboo were widely praised as early as the Tang dynasty. Qizhou's White Flower Snake medicine is supposed to relieve rheumatic pains, while its Green Hairy-backed Turtles are used in medicines that allegedly cure tuberculosis and body fluid deficiencies.
About halfway between Qizhou and Jiujiang, the river leaves Hubei Province and thenceforth marks the provincial boundary between Hubei to the north and JiangXito the south as far as the mouth of Poyang Lake.