The Origin of Place Names in Nanfaxin

There is a village in the southwest of Shunyi District called Nanfaxin, formerly known as Nancaodi.

There were only three or five families in the early southern grassland. They are hardworking and brave, turning the barren land here into fertile land, and the crops are harvested year after year. This attracted many people from other places, and the southern grassland gradually prospered. In the thirty-eighth year of Qing Qianlong (1773), Yang, a second-class official in the imperial court and a minister of punishments, died of illness. His family searched everywhere for a suitable place to bury him, but found it inappropriate to look for many places. Later, someone discovered the southern grassland, a treasure trove of feng shui. Southern grassland, lush vegetation; Sheep (yang) eat grass, and the family is prosperous. So, Yang's family really buried him in the southern grassland. Later, people in the South Grassland looked at Yang's grave and wanted to dig it out, but they were taken care of by his descendants. In order to break the Yang family's geomantic omen, people simply renamed the South Grassland Nanfaxin, which means poisoning sheep (Yang) with arsenic to prevent the Yang family from prospering.