Fuguo county
# Fuguo county

The metropolitan county or fuguo county (Chinese: 附郭縣; pinyin: Fùguō Xiàn; lit. 'the county attached to a walled city'), known as fuguo xian or yiguo xian (Chinese: 倚郭縣; pinyin: Yǐguō Xiàn) in Chinese, was a county of which seat located in the walled city of its superior, especially a prefectural one. It is a common administrative pattern in imperial China.

Since the Yuan dynasty, some zhou (smaller prefectures) began to be compact to dissolve their metropolitan counties, thus they had direct authority over their walled cities along with environs (namely zhou proper), rather than via any a county. Since the Ming dynasty, all the metropolitan counties of zhou (department) were eliminated.

There were multiple metropolitan counties in a larger prefecture, generally: three and four in one instance respectively (Suzhou in Qing, since 1724: Wu, Changzhou and Yuanhe; Jingzhao in Tang, since the late 660s: Chang'an, Wannian, Qianfeng and Mingtang), two in all others. In such cases, their boundary ran through the walled city, and their owned yamen were sited in the appropriate sectors.

Although the metropolitan county was given administrative pride among the prefecture, its magistrate was also known as the "head county [magistrate]", the position under superior control directly may not to be desirable among the officialdom. A popular proverb in the Qing dynasty says, "If you had done something bad in your previous incarnation, you would be an average magistrate now; if you had done something worse, you would be a magistrate of a prefectural metropolitan county; but if you had done something worst, you would be a magistrate of a provincial metropolitan county (前生不善，今生知縣；前生作惡，知縣附郭；惡貫滿盈，附郭省城)".

Some metropolitan counties are reserved so far, however, with urbanization many of them have been merged, similar to the consolidated city-county in the US.

