¡¡¡¡The Nanjing Gazetteer will soon be published, making it the most complete, detailed geographic collection of Nanjing in a single geographic reference book,Nanjing Municipal Place-name Office said on Wednesday.

¡¡¡¡It is learned that, as of now all existing place-name reference books for Nanjing have been written over 20 years ago, without a single complete edition among them£»the most inclusive only have some 100,000 characters. This new edition of the Nanjing Gazetteer has been borne from 8 years of compilation by place-name expert Xu Xingzhao, who poured over thousands of historic records in achieving this task. The entire book have 1.6 million characters with nearly 40,000 place names, including those which still stand in Nanjing as well as those that have been lost, covering land and hydrological features, bridges and roadways, irrigation works, residential areas and so forth.

¡¡¡¡Each place item in the Nanjing Gazetteer has its name represented in Pinyin, including information like its geographical profile, the meaning of its name and its change over time, as well as relevant natural, economic, societal and cultural information.