Historical background of Huguang filling Sichuan

Sichuan Tongzhi: "Since the Han and Tang Dynasties, there have been many toothed fireworks in Shu. After the war in the late Ming Dynasty, Dingkou was as rare as the morning star. " According to the population statistics in the twenty-four years of Kangxi, the population of Sichuan Province, which experienced large-scale wars, was only over 90,000. During the reign of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty, the Sichuan Basin finally calmed down and a number of new local officials began to take office. In the eyes of these ambitious officials, I don't know how rich Sichuan is. However, when they rode to the new official residence, they found that the legendary land of abundance was so desolate, broken and riddled with holes.

In the seventh year of Kangxi, Dedi Zhang, the governor of Sichuan Province, played Emperor Kangxi with great anxiety, showing a strong sense of hardship. He said: "I am honored to be appointed as the highest local official in Sichuan by the emperor and come to this war-torn place to show my great ambition. But now, when I stand in the devastated past, I can't increase my income, and it's hard to collect taxes, which makes me feel embarrassed, unable to eat or sleep. I was sent by the emperor, but I am loyal to the country and the court. After a few days of thinking, I feel that there seems to be no other good way to attract immigrants to reclaim land and rebuild their homes. " Historical materials of Ming and Qing dynasties, title book of the Ministry of Housing.

Governor Zhang also mentioned some immigration methods in his memorial. For example, local officials in neighboring provinces of Sichuan can be ordered to check those Sichuanese who left their homes because of the war and register them, and then Sichuan can "send officials to take over them" or the government can directly introduce immigration policies and move people from densely populated provinces to Sichuan through administrative means. Emperor Kangxi, sitting on the dragon chair in the Forbidden City, is also struggling with the taxation and reconstruction of the whole country. He received memorials from local officials in Sichuan, called relevant departments to listen to relevant reports, officially promulgated an imperial edict entitled "Recruiting People to Fill Sichuan in the Thirty-third Year of Kangxi", and ordered large-scale immigration from Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong and other places to Sichuan. Southern Shaanxi includes Hanzhong, Ankang and Shangluo in Shaanxi Province. In the early Qing Dynasty, there were quite a number of ancient forests here, which were called "Nanshan Old Forest" and "Bashan Old Forest". There are few people here, and most of the fields are barren, showing a scene of "tigers and wolves have more feet than people, and they are thousands of miles away". The bleak scene of "the most yellow hairs and white reeds". Southern Shaanxi is surrounded by mountains, and the closed terrain has not been spared from the troubles of the war-the rise and failure of the peasant movements in Zhang and Li Zicheng in the late Ming Dynasty, the dying struggle of the Ming regime, and the chaos in San Francisco in the early Qing Dynasty, all of which have affected southern Shaanxi. Although in the Ming Dynasty, a large number of refugees entered Qinba area to reclaim land for a living, and the population increased, but after decades of war in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the population dropped sharply. The victims in southern Shaanxi are worse than those in Sichuan. "Reading Historical Records Minutes" records: "In the forty-six years of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (16 18), there were 670 households with 3,576 people in Hanyin County". Peasant uprising in the late Ming Dynasty, anti-Qing in Wu Sangui in the early Qing Dynasty, and southern Shaanxi were the main battlefields, and the population dropped sharply. Records of Hanyin County in Jiaqing: In Hanyin County in the late Ming Dynasty, there were only ten ruined people and not many aborigines, leaving only eleven or two. The sparsely populated parts of southern Shaanxi have become extremely desolate at this time. It goes without saying that the mountains and rivers are solid, and even the mountains and valleys are sparsely populated. This is not difficult to see from the number of households in some counties in southern Shaanxi in the early years of Kangxi: Hanyin 4 households, Xunyang 4 households, Zhen 'an 2 households, Shangnan 1 household, Yang Shan 2 households, Pingli 1 household and Baihe 1 household. This shows the depression and poverty in southern Shaanxi in the early Qing Dynasty. Cao, an expert in immigration history, estimated that about 70% of the population in southern Shaanxi at that time either died in the war or emigrated.

The sharp drop in population has seriously affected the development process of mountainous areas in southern Shaanxi. In order to avoid land shortage and increase tax revenue, the court in the early Qing Dynasty adopted a series of preferential economic measures to increase the population in war-torn areas. In the sixth year of Shunzhi (1649), the imperial court issued a land reclamation order, and in the fourteenth year of Shunzhi (1657), the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development promulgated the detailed rules for the punishment of land reclamation, which expressly stipulated that those who made meritorious deeds in land reclamation should be rewarded, and the number of land reclamation and the increase or decrease of household registration should be used as the basis for assessing local officials. During the reign of Kangxi, the Regulations on Land Reclamation was further revised, and various preferential policies were stipulated to encourage recruitment. These generous reclamation policies, suitable climate and fertile land in southern Shaanxi undoubtedly have a strong attraction to farmers who have no land or little land in densely populated areas. At the same time, the southeast provinces, especially the Huguang area, are also suffering from disasters and famines. The victims fled in droves, eager to find suitable land to settle down and start businesses. Under the extrapolation of Neila, the continuation of "Huguang filling Sichuan" finally contributed to the immigration tide of "Huguang filling southern Shaanxi" in Qing Dynasty. Of course, another important reason why southern Shaanxi became an important immigrant area in the Qing Dynasty was that in the early Qing Dynasty, taxes in southern Shaanxi were low and land rent was extremely light, which was very attractive to landless or landless farmers in areas with highly developed agriculture and economy.

Of course, the imperial court not only adopted preferential economic policies to attract immigrants, but also adopted a policy of forced relocation. During the reign of Shunzhi and Kangxi, the imperial court forcibly moved to the sea twice, which made the coastal residents of Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang move inland. Immigrants have gone through hardships to enter the Qinba Mountain area, roughly from east to west, and first entered the mountains from the plains. During the Qianlong period, immigrants basically filled the old forest areas in Hanshui River basin and Qinba Mountain area, and the migration trend in southern Shaanxi came to an end during the Daoguang period.

In this wave of immigration, some descendants of the Wu family in Changsha, Hunan Province mentioned above have also become an important part of this immigrant army. Only Wu Shangxi came to southern Shaanxi alone. After gaining a foothold in Yanping, Hanyin, Wu immediately returned to his hometown to attract the other four Wu families. From the 21st year of Qianlong (1756) to the 34th year (1769), the Wu's five houses (Gao Qiao Dam House, Jinjing House, House, Dalu House and Gaotang House) in Changsha moved to southern Shaanxi, which lasted for 14 years. During the Xianfeng period, the descendants of Wu in southern Shaanxi "saw more than 1,300 people in Dingkou". Until now, Wu is still the local first surname. The reproduction and growth of Wu's population in southern Shaanxi is actually a microcosm of the explosive population growth in southern Shaanxi in the middle and late Qing Dynasty.

Hanshui River Basin and Qinba Mountain Area were indirectly affected by a large number of immigrants in the last hundred years from Qianlong to Daoguang, resulting in a very high proportion of local population: "Ten have no indigenous people, and two have". The policy of reclamation and forced demolition by the imperial court in the early Qing Dynasty made the population of Hanyin County soar from 3,570 in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty to123,300 in the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, becoming "10 households with 9 guests and no aborigines for a hundred years". Hakka people who settled in southern Shaanxi mainly came from southern provinces, among which Huguang was the most. According to a small study, the population of 10 counties in Baocheng, Nanzheng, Mianxian, Chenggu, Xixiang, Shiquan, Hanyin, Shangzhou and Ankang increased from 416,000 in the middle of Kangxi to 2 1 17 in the early years of Daoguang.

A large number of immigrants from Hunan and Guangxi moved in, which made many mountainous areas in southern Shaanxi widely reclaimed, greatly increased the area of cultivated land, and the degree of land development and utilization exceeded any period in history. Their farming methods and agricultural and sideline products such as sericulture, tea, ramie and textiles are typical examples of southern immigrants developing mountainous areas. Southern immigrants who are used to paddy field farming are not satisfied with planting dry crops on sloping fields, but use their original farming experience to build canals and weirs in their settlements, drink irrigation water and grow rice. This is the case throughout southern Shaanxi. Wu Dunpin, the third generation of Wu who moved to Shaanxi and Houquan County, introduced the article "Quality Beauty" written for his genealogy "Xian De Lu";

At that time, there were few fields on the weir, and Qin Guan was not familiar with the drainage method of ditches. When it rains, it is a field, and when it doesn't rain, it is a field, so it is forbidden to have no field. It is for the benefit of Yang and the manpower of residents to dredge and block the drainage ditch, spend the distance between ditches and store the drainage ditch when the pond is deep. In a few years, the foothills of Yanping Mountain will be cultivated into fields ... If the water conservancy is south of Hanyin, I will pay more attention to it, and my husband Wu will be happy for a hundred years.

When Wu's ancestors came to Yanping, they faced a whole hillside. Originally, the land was less flat, leaving them no more land suitable for planting. The locals also depend on the weather to eat, plant when it rains, and abandon it when it doesn't rain. The hardships at that time can be imagined, but Wu's ancestors overcame many difficulties and led the local people to dig ditches, open up wasteland and repair terraces year after year, and grafted the southern paddy field farming methods on the hillside with an altitude of 500 to 600 meters according to local conditions. Terrace construction began in Qianlong period, and lasted for several generations 100 years. It has a history of more than 250 years. Wu Zu cultivated 10,000 mu of terraced fields with sweat and wisdom, and wrote a magnificent hundred-year history of immigration reclamation, which became the historical epitome of the migration of Huguang immigrants to southern Shaanxi in the early Qing Dynasty.

"Mu of gold has fertile soil and mountains have fun. Fortunately, there are five kinds of food that can be eaten more than rice. " The massive migration of Huguang immigrants not only promoted the development and economic development of southern Shaanxi, but also caused the mutual blending of different cultures, making Shaanxi more inclined to "the south of the north, the north of the south" and becoming a region where North and South cultures blend.