Tianjin and Beijing are so close, why is there such a big accent gap?

1. The concept of "Anhui" did not exist when the "real old Tianjin Wei" came to the north from the south. "Anhui" is a new province created by cutting South Zhili after Manchuria occupied China. During the Yongle period, most of the people stationed in Beijing and Tianjin came from Fengyang, Huai 'an and Xuzhou. Fengyang Prefecture is basically the northern part of what was later called "Anhui", while Huai 'an Prefecture and Xuzhou are basically the northern parts of the newly-built "Jiangsu". Therefore, it is inappropriate to mention "Anhui" and "Jiangsu" in the Ming Dynasty, because these two concepts did not exist at that time.

2. The so-called "Anhui dialect" is an extremely inaccurate and meaningless pseudo-concept. It is precisely because "Anhui" and "Jiangsu" were artificially cut out, and the forced division of this colonial power completely ignored the original different language and cultural areas in Nanzhili, just to facilitate its colonial rule and suppress resistance, so the later created "Anhui Province" could not sum up something called "Anhui dialect" from any angle. In the Ming Dynasty, Laofengyangfu area was partial to Central Plains Mandarin, while Jianghuai area was Xiajiang dialect. Because Jiangnan is a mountainous area, dialects are more complicated. There are both Wu dialect and Gan dialect. The same is true of "Jiangsu", except that in addition to the Wu dialect area in southern Jiangsu, there is also the Mandarin area in Nanjing. This is also the fundamental reason why "Jiangsu" formed the so-called "province of infighting".