What is the historical relationship between Xinjiang and Henan?

Xinjiang and Henan have a deep connection. Many people in Xinjiang today can speak Henan dialect, but they basically live in the Xinjiang Corps. After the establishment of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, in order to protect the northwest border of our country, a large number of passionate young people were recruited from the interior and rushed to the northwest of the motherland! This is the first reason.

In 1956, 48 trains departed from Zhengzhou, carrying passionate young people from Henan to Xinjiang. Most of them joined the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. Of course, some of them were assigned to local governments, and some entered the petroleum and nonferrous industries. Metal and other factories and mining enterprises. This is the main force of Henan people in Xinjiang, and it is also the most important reason why the population of Henan in Xinjiang was large in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The second reason is the Songwu Army. The army led by Zuo Zongtang when he regained Xinjiang during the Qing Dynasty was the Songwu Army.

Zuo Zongtang led this army to defeat Aguba and regained the entire Xinjiang region. The Kokand Khanate to which Agubai belonged was also severely damaged by its defeat by Zuo Zongtang, but it was not completely destroyed at that time. Therefore, this army was stationed in Xinjiang to prepare for another invasion by Haohan. Of course, Kokand was later annexed by Tsarist Russia, but that is another story. So most of this army stayed in Xinjiang and became the first batch of Henan people to open up Xinjiang! When the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps was established, a large number of Henan aid workers were the second batch of Henanese to explore Xinjiang. The third reason is actually related to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. The main reason is the army of cotton pickers!

If you have been to Xinjiang, you will know that the soil in Xinjiang is very suitable for growing cotton, but the degree of mechanization of picking cotton is very low, so a large number of people are needed to help pick during the harvest season. There are many people from Henan in the corps, and many of them are actually related to their hometowns. Generally, they go to their fellow villagers for things like this, so there are naturally many cotton-picking armies in Henan!

In 2000, I often saw reports on Henan TV that cotton-picking armies from Henan organized groups to pick cotton in Xinjiang. Every year, the labor experts received additional rewards in addition to wages. The reward at that time was that they could fly back. Henan. Although flying is now commonplace, air tickets were indeed very expensive at the time, so this was an honor!

In recent years, more than 500,000 people come to Xinjiang to pick cotton every year, mainly from Henan, Sichuan, Guizhou and other places, but Henanese make up the majority. It is not convenient to travel back and forth between Xinjiang and Henan every year, so many people slowly begin to settle in Xinjiang. Of course, this process is relatively slow and subtle. However, judging from the data from the 6th National Census, 210,000 people from Henan have flowed into Xinjiang in the past 10 years, ranking first among the population from other provinces flowing into Xinjiang!

As of now, the total population of Xinjiang has reached more than 24 million, of which more than 4 million are from Henan, accounting for 1/5 of the total population of Xinjiang. Even videos posted on Douyin show that some Uighurs have learned Henan dialect, which they call Chinese.

In fact, the official saying of this Henan dialect should be Central Plains Mandarin!