An attached county[1][2] or satellite county,[3] sometimes left untranslated in its Chinese name as a fuguoxian,[4] was a kind of historical tertiary administrative division in late Imperial China.
[6] Since the Yuan dynasty, some zhou (smaller prefectures) began to be compact to dissolve their attached counties, thus they had direct authority over their walled cities along with environs (namely, zhou proper), rather than via any county.
Since the Ming dynasty, all the attached counties of zhou (subprefectures) were eliminated.
[5] There were, generally, multiple attached counties in larger prefectures: 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.