Why did Shandong people choose the Northeast instead of the richer Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces?

The reason why Shandong people don't go to Jiangsu and Zhejiang is that people from other places get there first, and there is no farmland to grow in Jiangnan. Coupled with the heavy grain tax, in the end, they can only choose the northeast as the only choice for migration.

Although Jiangnan looks very rich and is a land of plenty, it has a large population. With the continuous reclamation in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, there are not so many suitable cultivated land in this area. In other words, even if Shandong people arrive in the south of the Yangtze River, they have no land to plant. Without land, in that era when agriculture was the absolute pillar, people could not feed at all.

The so-called wealth is also relative. In fact, the life of the bottom farmers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is also very miserable. Since the Ming Dynasty, the grain tax in Jiangnan was much heavier than that in North China, Hubei and Hunan. A large part of our good feelings for Jiangnan are imaginary, but only a small number of rich and idle literati recite scriptures for Jiangnan. In fact, it is not the whole of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. At that time, Jiangsu and Zhejiang were also plagued by floods, windstorms and military disasters ..... So Jiangsu and Zhejiang were not paradise.

Of course, the most important thing is that people from other places beat us to it. /kloc-In the second half of the 9th century, after the baptism of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom War in 14, the provinces in the Yangtze River valley became very empty, so a large number of farmers from Hunan, Hubei, northern Jiangsu, Henan and victims flooded the south of the Yangtze River rapidly. By the time Shandong people want to leave, they have already moved first.

At that time, the natural and economic environment in North China deteriorated and the society was in turmoil. For farmers in Shandong and North China, immigration has become a necessity. They may not really want to immigrate to Kanto, but there is no better choice. After realistic screening, Northeast China is not only the only place, but also the best place. Because in addition to the northeast, there is no extra land in the world to accommodate their intervention! Although this direction made the Qing government very unhappy, it did not mean to disobey the court, so it was ignored.