Xuzhou Immigrant Translation

I often hear the older generation talking about Xuzhou in the south and Xuzhou in the north, and I can't help wondering: Xuzhou in our impression is a prefecture-level city in northern Jiangsu, located at the junction of Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and Anhui provinces. Known as the thoroughfare of five provinces, it has always been a battleground for military strategists. How can such a city be divided into north and south? If there is such a division, then where does the present North and South Xuzhou refer to?

Xuzhou today

But if you look through the history, you will find that the division between North and South Xuzhou should start from a specific history.

Southern Song Dynasty

The Northern and Southern Dynasties was a period of great division in the history of China, and the division between the North and the South and the confrontation between the North and the South were the remarkable characteristics of this period. At that time, Xuzhou was at the junction of Guanluo (traditional political center), Youyan (northern frontier political center) and Jiangnan (financial pillar), and its geographical position was extremely important. Xuzhou naturally became the focus of the North-South struggle. Where there is competition, there is war. In order to escape the war, many Xuzhou people were forced to move south to Zhenjiang.

North and South Xuzhou in the Southern Dynasties and the Qi Dynasty

At that time, most of the Huaihe River basin and the south of the Yangtze River were ruled by the Southern Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty was the first dynasty in the Southern Dynasty, with a relatively large scope of rule. Jiankang, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, is today's Nanjing area. Compared with the turbulent Xuzhou, Zhenjiang, adjacent to the political center, is undoubtedly stable and harmonious. Because more people came to Zhenjiang in a generation, in order to distinguish North Xuzhou (at that time, North Xuzhou was a large area north of Huaihe River, and its actual area was much larger than that of today's Xuzhou), in 43 1 year, Song Wendi changed the north of the Yangtze River to South Yanzhou, and the south of the Yangtze River to South Xuzhou, and ruled in today's Zhenjiang, which was called Jingkou at that time. This title lasted for hundreds of years, from the Qi, Liang and Chen dynasties until the Sui Dynasty (589) abolished South Xuzhou and became an ancient name in the long history.

Zhen Jiangnan xujingcheng

Although South Xuzhou has not existed for a long time, it has a great influence on Zhenjiang today. First of all, in Zhenjiang today, we can still see the shadow of South Xuzhou, such as South Xu Lu and South Xu Academy, which is probably the legacy of "South Xuzhou". Secondly, Zhenjiang, located in the south of the Yangtze River, belongs to the Wu dialect area as Nanjing in history. The Central Plains Mandarin, Jianghuai Mandarin and local Wu dialect brought by a large number of northern immigrants have gradually formed a sub-dialect of Jianghuai dialect through changes and evolution, which is the Zhenjiang dialect we can hear today.

Distribution map of Jiangsu dialect