What do you mean by crossing the East?

In the old days, people from Shandong and Hebei went to the east of Shanhaiguan to make a living, which was called going east.

The trip to Kanto specifically refers to Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces. Because the three northeastern provinces are located in the east of Shanhaiguan, it is named.

Reasons for entering Kanto:

1, it is the long-term population growth in the mainland that makes the population saturated and it is impossible for everyone to have land. As a result, farmers in Shandong and Hebei, in order to make a living, went to the "Longxing Land" where the land was sparsely populated.

2. After the Opium War, the Qing government's control over the frontier weakened day by day, and Russia gradually encroached on the Heilongjiang border. The Qing government adopted the suggestion of Heilongjiang general Tepkin, and officially reclaimed land in the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860). From then on, land reclamation is prohibited and immigrants are encouraged to settle in the frontier to revitalize the economy outside the customs.

Extended data:

The word "Chuang" highlights the hardships of this route. The Qing court took the northeast as the "land of Longxing", fearing that a large number of Han people in Shanhaiguan would harm the interests of flag-bearers and destroy the Manchu customs and order. In the seventh year of Kangxi (1668), the policy of banning was implemented, and then the measures became more and more severe, from partial ban to comprehensive ban, from customs clearance to expulsion of refugees. Although the ban is getting more and more severe, it can't completely prevent people from entering the northeast. Due to the increasingly heavy pressure of life and the continuous natural famine, more and more farmers from Shandong and Hebei provinces sneaked across the ocean to Liaodong, or crossed the Great Wall to western Liaoning privately and flocked to the sleeping northeast Woye. These immigrants were all carried out under the conditions of the forbidden policy of the Qing court, so they were called "eastward crossing".

References:

Baidu encyclopedia-going to the east