Talk about Shu people and Sichuan people in Chengdu

Discussing about Shu people and Sichuan people in Chengdu

20181210

Originally, there was no comparison between Shu people and Sichuan people. In terms of geographical scope, Shu people and Sichuan people The same area in Pakistan is within the scope of Sichuan, and the people who live in this area are named after the region. However, as Chongqing was classified as a municipality directly under the Central Government, a large part of it was separated from Sichuan. In fact, it was equivalent to peeling off the Ba part. Therefore, only when we talk about Shu people and Sichuan people can we compare them.

The name Sichuan came from the Northern Song Dynasty. More than 1,000 years ago, the four provinces merged and were referred to as Sichuan. Before that, it was mainly called Shuba. When Yu divided Jiuzhou, it belonged to Liangzhou, and then Yizhou was divided. In other words, the Sichuan people's statement only came into existence after the Northern Song Dynasty. In fact, even so, the composition of Sichuan people has undergone great changes and deviated greatly from Shu. The reasons for this result are war and immigration.

The earliest residents who lived here originated from the Minshan Mountains and later settled in what is now the Chengdu Plain. They were the ancient Shu people. After the development of three kings and two emperors, the characteristics of this area were formed. Then in 316 BC, Qin entered Shu and began to change the situation here. After that, a large number of Qin people entered Sichuan, diluting the Shu people for the first time.

Then came the Shu Han Dynasty of the Three Kingdoms, and a large number of people from the Central Plains entered Shu, further integrating the population structure of this area.

After that, there were looting by Nanzhao and Tubo, plunder by the Mongolian invasion, chaotic strangulation in the late Yuan Dynasty, and the massacre by the peasant army in the late Ming Dynasty, leaving very few remains of the ancestors of the Shu people. There were so few people, especially after the end of the Ming Dynasty, that only less than 10% of the Ming Dynasty survivors were left. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that there was a saying that "Huguang filled Sichuan".

Huguang’s occupation of Sichuan was a large-scale population migration, and Sichuan was indeed sparsely populated at that time. In the 24th year of Kangxi’s reign, the remaining population in Sichuan was less than 90,000. In order to develop the economy, the Qing government issued a decree to encourage immigrants to Sichuan and granted preferential policies, resulting in the number of immigrants reaching one million.

The immigrants mainly come from the three provinces of Hunan, Hubei, and Guangdong, as well as more than a dozen provinces including Shaanxi, Henan, Shandong, Yunnan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Fujian, Shanxi, and Gansu. , among which Huguang area has the largest number of immigrants.

As a result of immigration, the population of Sichuan increased, and it also made Sichuan no longer the Sichuan of the Shu people. The "Chengdu Survey" in the late Qing Dynasty once described that "Today's Chengdu people are all originally from other provinces." From this point of view, the Shu people have basically disappeared in Sichuan. In other words, the current Sichuan people are no longer the ancient people. The remaining lineage of Shu people in the Shu period are all descendants of people from other provinces.