Tracing Shanghai drift: Shanghai drift in history.

During the more than one hundred years from the opening of Shanghai port to 1949, Shanghai experienced three huge waves of immigrants.

The first large-scale immigration in Shanghai originated from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom War. In the early 1960s, the Taiping Army attacked Suzhou and Hangzhou on a large scale. During this period, a large number of refugees in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, especially in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, hid in the concession protected by foreign forces, which directly contributed to the prosperity of the concession and laid the foundation for attracting immigrants in the future. From 1855 to 1865, the population of Shanghai increased by 900,000. The second time was during the Japanese invasion of China. The population of the two concessions in Shanghai increased by 780,000. The third time was during the War of Liberation, and the population of Shanghai increased by 2.08 million. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, a large number of people in Shanghai moved out, but the inflow was greatly reduced, and the group of modern Shanghainese gradually stabilized. This situation did not completely change until around 1990.

From the way of immigration, most of them are scattered, spontaneous and unorganized immigrants, rather than group immigrants with clan as the unit in ancient times. According to the statistics of June 1950, the largest number of people are in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, both exceeding one million. The influx of so many immigrants into Shanghai quickly changed the population structure of Shanghai, making the non-Shanghai registered population far more than the local population, so the registered population in Shanghai only accounted for 15% at that time. According to the current statement, another 85% of people who come to Shanghai are "Shanghai drifters".