Lì Dàoyuán 酈道元 (d. 527), zì Shàncháng 善長, of Fànyáng 范陽, was a Northern Wèi official, geographer, and the author of the Shuǐjīng zhù (KR2k0058), the foundational commentary on the Shuǐjīng 水經 and the principal monument of medieval Chinese historical hydrology and descriptive geography. He served in a series of provincial Inspectorates and rose to Yùshǐzhōngwèi 御史中尉 (Vice Censor-in-Chief) under Emperor Xiàomíng (r. 515–528). His reputation in office was for severity (the Wèishū biography places him in the Kùlì 酷吏 — “harsh-officials” — chapter); he was killed in 527 in the suppression of the rebellion of Xiāo Bǎoyīn 蕭寶夤 in the Yīnpán 陰盤 valley near Cháng’ān. His personal travels — the documentary basis for the Shuǐjīng zhù’s firsthand passages — extended through northern China, to which his book is most accurate; for the channels south of the Chángjiāng and beyond the frontier, he relied on hearsay and earlier texts, with consequent inaccuracies that the Sìkù compilers and subsequent scholars have catalogued.