Place-Name Legend, Execution-Ground Memory, and Burial-Site Folklore in Rural China: The Taohuagang Narrative from Jiepai, Jiangsu

This record is a primary-source archival item about Taohuagang, a Jiepai place-name legend linking execution-ground memory, burial-site folklore, flood-disrupted graves, red peach-blossom origins, childhood threats, and landscape transformation in rural Jiangsu, curated for research use in toponymic folklore, Chinese folklore, deathscape studies, rural China studies, Jiangnan folklore, local history, flood memory, and childhood fear narratives. It is released as the OA_V1 item-level record for “Taohuagang,” a Chinese narrative text within the Jiepai Jianghu section of the Chuanyue Archive. The text documents a Jiepai place-name legend concerning Taohuagang, a former burial and execution site remembered through flood-damaged graves, blood-red peach blossoms, childhood threats, and later landscape transformation. It preserves Taohuagang as a local narrative site where name origin, violence, burial memory, river-flood history, and child discipline converge. The record’s value lies in place-name legend, toponymic folklore, execution-ground memory, burial-site folklore, Chinese folklore, deathscape studies, rural China studies, Jiangnan folklore, flood memory, childhood fear narrative, and local history. It records how a place name, a vanished landscape, and a frightening childhood warning become connected through oral tradition and local memory. Methodologically, this item combines the Archive Author’s childhood memory, family oral transmission, later questioning of the author’s father, narrative clarification, local conceptual explanation, and author annotations. The annotations distinguish oral tradition, uncertain dating, father-based narration, authorial narrative addition, local vocabulary, and provenance boundaries. A key feature of this record is the relation between place name and narrative explanation. Taohuagang is remembered as a place whose name is linked to peach trees and unusually red blossoms, said to have emerged after blood from an execution soaked into the ground. The item therefore functions as a record of toponymic folklore as well as a local deathscape narrative. The record also preserves the local term “yanchao,” written as “淹潮,” meaning flooding, floodwater, or high water. The narrative connects this flood memory with displaced graves, later riverbank construction, factory-building, ferry construction, and the disappearance of the original site. This item belongs to the Jiepai Jianghu Legends and Beliefs Series. The series-level record has been published on Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20834123. This item-level record has DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20848364. The item is also part of the broader Chuanyue Archive, a native-insider emic vernacular multimodal archive. Related records will be released on a rolling basis over the next few months. This public OA_V1 release includes the public narrative text, author annotations, and contextual metadata. It does not include the Taohuagang location map, precise spatial materials, raw field notes, private videos, or unreleased provenance materials. Those materials are retained in the Author Private Master Archive. Authorship and upload roles are separate. The Archive Author, The Jiepai Archivist, is the creator, archive owner, rights holder, and public contact person. Any uploader, depositor, or curatorial assistant provides deposit and formatting assistance only and is not the author, creator, archive owner, rights holder, or public contact for this archive.