Shouguang Henan immigrants

According to the records in Ming History, a large number of genealogy and inscriptions, the migration places of Hongdong immigrants in Shanxi in the early Ming Dynasty were mainly distributed in Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Beijing and other places, and a small number of them were scattered in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia. Zhu Yuanzhang's hometown, Anhui, was the main battlefield of peasant uprising at the end of Yuan Dynasty, and it was also the frequent area of flood, drought and locust disaster. Zhu Yuanzhang fought here and moved to Jiangsu and Zhejiang for more than ten years. With the Yuan Army, Zhang Shicheng, and Chen Youliang, they fought and lost many times, and lived and died together, resulting in a broken and desolate situation of "bones exposed in the wild, thousands of miles silent". Therefore, when Zhu Yuanzhang immigrated in the early Ming Dynasty, his hometown was his first thought. Shortly after Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed himself emperor, he forcibly moved thousands of families in the Taihu Lake basin to his hometown ("The History of the Ming Dynasty, the Records of Food Goods").

In November of the ninth year of Hongwu, he also "migrated to Shanxi and really settled the proletarians Tian Fengyang" (see Mao Pian II in Ming Dynasty) in order to make his hometown prosperous at an early date. Most of the immigrants in Henan Province moved in during Hongwu period, followed by Yongle period. According to the statistics of local chronicles, genealogy and inscriptions, more than 95% of the immigrants came from Hongtong County, Shanxi Province. For example, in the Preface of Mu Family Tree in Huixian County, Henan Province, several generations of Mu family moved from Luanchaigou in Hongtong County to Weihui, Henan Province. Wanli years, moved to the northwest corner of Huoyi Mujiaying fifteen miles away from the city. Judging from the distribution of Henan immigrants, most of them are in the Yellow River and Huaihe River basins, which were deserted in the natural and man-made disasters at the end of Yuan Dynasty. According to genealogy, inscriptions and other data, most immigrants from Hebei and Beijing moved in from Hongdong County during Yongle period, which was closely related to the serious war damage during the "Jingnan Battle" in this area and the move of Ming Chengzu to Beijing. The immigrants who moved to Shandong are mainly distributed in Dongchang, Jinan, Yanzhou, Qingzhou and other provinces in the Huangpan District, involving more than 60 counties and cities in Shandong today. After immigrants move in, most of them take their surnames as village names, and some take the names of their native counties as names, such as Dingguantun, Suiguantun, Huguantun, Li Ying, Tunliu Camp and Changziying.

The ancient society in China was an ultra-stable social organization structure, and Confucian ethics advocated that "parents are not allowed to travel far". Immigration is a deep-rooted traditional concept of China people. Therefore, it can be concluded that the immigrants in the early Ming Dynasty were enforced by the government, and the incidents of immigrants fleeing halfway often occurred. In order to prevent immigrants from fleeing, immigration officials have come up with various methods, such as smashing immigrants' little toenails and tying them with ropes, which are also reflected in folklore. It is said that the descendants of Sophora japonica immigrants all have the same physiological characteristics-the little toenails of both feet are compound. There are two explanations for this: first, in order to prevent immigrants from escaping halfway, officials forcibly took off their shoes and scratched their toenails as a sign. After the injury, the toenails of the immigrants became compound; On the other hand, at that time, the government stipulated that families with more than two sons, except the youngest son, had to move out. On the occasion of "Where are you going?", in order to find her sons in the future, the mother bit the little toenails of her sons who had moved into two petals as a mark. This physiological feature, as the genetic gene of Sophora japonica immigrants, was also passed on to their descendants. In the process of escorting immigrants, officers and men forcibly tied their hands behind their backs and tied them together with long ropes to prevent them from escaping. Because of the long-term life of being escorted, they gradually developed the habit of walking with their hands behind their backs, and their descendants also inherited this custom. On the way to escort, people have to ask the escort officer to untie the tied hands before they can walk, so as long as someone shouts "relieve yourself", people will know that someone in the team has to pee. Over time, "relieving oneself" has become a special synonym for "defecation" in immigrant groups.

In order to prevent immigrants from living together in the place where they moved in, forming new family forces and affecting social stability, the immigration law of the Ming Dynasty also stipulated that people with the same surname could not move into the same place. Immigrants who pay attention to "changing their surnames" are forced to change their surnames painfully in order to avoid the separation of their flesh and blood again, so they separate multiple surnames from some families. According to the records: "In the second year of Ming Hongwu, the people moved to the village with complete terms and strict laws. No one with the same surname is allowed to live in a village. (Wei's and Liu's) The first two brothers couldn't bear to leave their brotherly feelings for a while, but they changed their surnames to two-Wei's and Liu's, and the bronze Buddha remembered them. " (Liu Wei Genealogy in Cao County) Those who don't want to change their names can only be separated from each other and resettled in different places. For example, according to genealogical data, the Gu family in Guangrao, Liu Zhu, Shouguang, Tianma and Wulian counties in Shandong Province all came from the Gu family in Hongdong, Shanxi Province.

Dream of thousands of Baidu

The large-scale forced migration process that lasted for more than 50 years in the early Ming Dynasty was full of hardships and tears. This move not only left many unique customs and physiological characteristics among the immigrant groups and their descendants, but also played a very important and positive role in alleviating social contradictions at that time, promoting the recovery and development of agricultural production and stabilizing society. Immigration activities, first of all, make the population of immigrant areas increase greatly in a short period of time, effectively solving the urgent need of local labor shortage. For example, the total population of Hongwu in Henan Province was about 1 9 1 0.3 million in twenty-six years, and it increased rapidly to about 4.36 million (149 1) in four years of Hongzhi. Secondly, the area of cultivated land has increased significantly. By the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu, the total area of cultivated land in China had reached 8.5 million hectares, which was four times higher than that in the first year of Hongwu. Due to the increase of labor force and the expansion of cultivated land area, agricultural production has been rapidly restored and developed, and the total grain output and land tax in the country have been continuously improved. For example, in the eighteenth year of Hongwu, the total land tax in China was about 20,865,438+10,000 stone, and in the twenty-sixth year of Hongwu, it soared to 32,789,800 stone. It can be said that the compulsory implementation of the immigration policy objectively eased various social contradictions at that time, mobilized farmers' enthusiasm for production to a certain extent, promoted social and economic prosperity, and laid a solid foundation for the prosperity of the Ming Dynasty during Yongle and Xuande periods.

The former Guangji Temple and Sophora japonica have long been washed away by the ever-expanding flood of Fenhe River. However, as the symbol of hometown, the locust tree and the old man's nest are forever deposited in the memory of those immigrant descendants. Since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the spontaneous revision of music scores by the people has never been ignored by the official ban, and it has become popular. Immigrants and their descendants have established another family tree in their new hometown, and they often trace the origin of the family back to the big locust tree and the old nest that "dreams of thousands of Baidu". After the outbreak of the Revolution of 1911, the Three People's Principles awakened people's self-awareness and inspired people's enthusiasm for seeking roots and ancestors. The descendants of Hongdong immigrants liberated from the shackles of autocracy are very eager to find their relatives who are still alive in Shanxi's hometown, and quietly set off an upsurge of seeking roots and offering sacrifices to their ancestors among them. Some Hongdong officials who are officials in areas where the descendants of immigrants are relatively concentrated are warmly treated by the descendants of immigrants because of their kinship. In view of this, in 19 14, Hongdong Renjing Daqi and Liu Zilin, who had served as officials in Shandong and other places, raised funds to build the site of the ancient pagoda tree in the second generation of the same root, erected a monument and organized people to edit the chronicle of the ancient pagoda tree. After the 1980s, the cultural activities of seeking roots and asking about sects based on the migration sites of Sophora japonica have become more active. From 199 1, every year around Tomb-Sweeping Day, a grand cultural activity of seeking roots and ancestors of Sophora japonica will be held. Descendants of locust tree immigrants from all over the country and even all over the world came to the locust tree devoutly to recall the once dreamy scene, which became a holy place for hundreds of millions of descendants of locust tree immigrants to seek roots and worship. This lingering story of "the same clan in the world, one family" constitutes a beautiful scenery in China traditional culture.

Finally found the root cause. I'm from Shandong branch

"Ask me where my hometown is, Shanxi Hong Tong Sophora japonica. What is the name of the ancestral home, the old man's nest under the big locust tree? " Since the Ming Dynasty, this ballad has been widely circulated among the people all over China, especially in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, and even frequently heard by overseas Chinese organizations. The locust tree in Hongtong County has become the spiritual sustenance of Chinese children because it bears the attachment and care of ancestors for their homeland. At the same time, folk songs clearly reveal the blood and tears in the large-scale immigration movement in the early Ming Dynasty.

Hometown of 100 million people

The immigration activities in ancient China have been going on since prehistoric times, both spontaneous and compulsory; There are economic reasons as well as political and military reasons. In the early Ming Dynasty, the immigration activities began with Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Emperor, and lasted for more than 50 years. Its scale and scope were rare in history. At that time, immigrants can be divided into economic immigrants and political and military immigrants. Political and military migration activities mainly refer to that in the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang forcibly moved the rich people in Song and Jia Hu areas of Jiangsu Province to Haozhou, the land of Longxing, and Nanjing, the land of Longju. After the Ming army conquered the metropolis, in order to strengthen its military strength, a large number of private households in Shanxi or mountainous areas moved to places south of Juyongguan and Beiping. After Emperor Chengzu moved to Beijing in the Ming Dynasty, in order to make Beiping, the newly moved capital, prosperous as soon as possible, a large number of wealthy families and businessmen in the south of the Yangtze River were forcibly moved to Beiping. In the early Ming Dynasty, the economic migration activities aimed at developing economy and stabilizing society were the largest, most extensive and most planned in Shanxi. This immigration activity began in the second year of Hongwu and lasted until the end of Yongle. There were 18 large-scale immigration activities before and after, and the total population of immigrants exceeded one million. Today, the resettlement area involves more than 500 counties and cities in 18 provinces and cities.

Numerous immigration activities of different scales in history have left different degrees of cultural heritage to future generations. The great ethnic migration in prehistoric times left a sense of national identity for the Chinese nation. The colonial immigration activities in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty effectively promoted the social stability and economic development of the Western Zhou Dynasty and laid a preliminary foundation for the formation of the Chinese nation. During the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, a large number of northern ethnic minorities moved inward, which promoted the further development of ethnic integration at that time and constituted a very important link in the history of the development of the Chinese nation. However, looking at all previous immigration activities in history, none left a deeper impression on the Chinese nation than the large-scale immigration activities in the early Ming Dynasty. The nest on the pagoda tree has become a symbol of hometown and a spiritual home in their dreams in the minds of more than 100 million Chinese descendants today.

Traces of folklore

After the forced migration in Shanxi in the Ming Dynasty, the scale of each migration was very large, with thousands or even more than 10,000 households. At that time, Shanxi immigrants mainly came from Taiyuan, Pingyang, Shandong, Ze, Liao, Qin and Fen (see Records of Grain and Goods in the Ming Dynasty), that is, today's Taiyuan, Linfen, Jincheng and Changzhi are the distribution centers of immigrants, and Hongtong County, which is located in the main traffic road and densely populated, naturally becomes one of the important distribution centers of immigrants. At that time, the government set up a station in Guangji Temple (built in Zhenguan period of Tang Dynasty) in the north of Hongtong County, which was responsible for distributing the numbers of concentrated immigrants, and then the immigrants were scattered to the road of no return in Hebei, Shandong, Henan and Anhui. There used to be a wide postal road next to Guangji Temple. There is a lush locust tree next to the post road. Because it is located on the open Fenhe beach, the old woman built a comfortable nest in the canopy. According to historical records, most migration activities are carried out in the late autumn of the slack season, when the leaves of Sophora japonica have withered, leaving only bare crowns and striking nests for the elderly. The old man who lives among the branches cries from time to time in the bleak autumn wind. The immigrants who were forced to go to the point of no return looked back step by step and drifted away. Looking at the nest on the big locust tree, they couldn't help but burst into tears and said goodbye. Over time, the years mercilessly washed away almost all the memories of Shanxi immigrants living in other places, only the big locust tree and the old man's nest when they left were deeply engraved in their hearts. As a result, the locust tree and the old man's nest became the only hometown story widely circulated among immigrant groups, which became the catharsis of their yearning for their homeland, and then became the symbol of their homeland, deeply integrated into the blood of immigrant descendants.

After a large number of Shanxi immigrants arrived at the resettlement sites, they settled down in villages and camps under the supervision of local officials. In order to help them resume production as soon as possible, the government has given them many preferential policies: the government provides them with farm tools, seeds and cattle for free, and also reduces taxes. Cultivated land is uniformly distributed by the government according to the number of dingkou, or 50 mu or 80 mu. In many places, it is even stipulated that "the relocated people will come with books, and farming is allowed, and the number of acres is not limited". For example, in the thirty-fifth year of Hongwu, the residents who moved to Beiping "paid for cattle tools and seeds and were exempted from tax for five years" (see Ming Taizu's Record above). Zhu Yuanzhang also set up the Agriculture Department in Henan, which was responsible for the management of land reclamation by immigrants, stipulating that all land reclaimed by farmers and immigrants should be owned by pioneers as a permanent cause. Ming Taizu also instructed local officials to distribute cattle and seeds to refugees and immigrants to help them resume production.