Talk:Fanzhen

Merge with Jiedushi

These are different facets of the same phenomenon. They should be merged. --Nlu (talk) 19:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Not all Jiedushi became Fanzhen - a separate article is more appropriate and follows the example of Chinese Wikipedia. Philg88 (talk) 08:22, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

We don't have articles on phenomena. We have articles on topics. The jiedushi were men who held an office. The territory they controlled was something else entirely and needs a separate article.

That said, this doesn't seem to be that article.

• We're bizarrely mistranslating 鎮 as "smaller-than-city bigger-than-village town" when what's clearly intended is its separate and original meaning of "garrison" or various other nouns related to "protection" as in Zhenjiang. The locations of the major garrisons were walled cities, not minor "border towns", and should never be called that even if Google Translate or WhateverAI offers that idea up first.
• All of our separate articles on the actual territories described here (mistakenly) call them jiedushi as a territory name or (mistakenly) translate them as circuits or (confusingly) call them 軍 or (mistakenly) 軍节度使 and not fanzhen at all.
• Xiong's Historical Dictionary of Medieval China that exhaustively lists and discusses the things glosses both JUN and FANGZHEN as "defense command" and (in places) "major garrison", but treats FANZHEN as the alternative name for fangzhen.

We need to use the more common term for the actual territories, which seems to be jun, however we translate it or disambiguate its pinyin from 郡 without using tones in the title or running text. We need to do a better job clarifying what the things were actually called at which times and if there were any important differences or if they were all synonymous.

Then we need to clean up administrative divisions of the Tang Empire and (eventually) the separate articles on the 48-odd territories involved. — LlywelynII 21:52, 18 September 2025 (UTC)