Six great migrations in history, no one can tell who came from where.

The first time: the "Yongjia Rebellion" in the Western Jin Dynasty.

Ten years after the Jin Dynasty unified China, the "Eight Kings Rebellion" broke out, and the national strength was greatly damaged. By the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, the water conservancy in the Central Plains was in disrepair, and droughts, locusts and diseases continued year after year, coupled with the impact of Wuhu forces in the west and north, resulting in a large-scale immigration tide.

The population of the Yellow River basin moved to the Yangtze River basin, and the population of the Yangtze River basin moved further south, forming the peak of the first great population migration in ancient China. The population moving south is about 900,000, which has changed the pattern of large population in the north and small population in the south since Qin and Han Dynasties, and the population in the south has increased rapidly. This is a landmark event that the population distribution center of China has shifted to the Yangtze River basin.

The second time: during the "An Shi Rebellion" in the Tang Dynasty

The "Anshi Rebellion" was the turning point of the Tang Dynasty from prosperity to decline. In seven years and two months, the main battlefield was basically in the north, and the south was still prosperous. In many southern towns such as Jinling and Guangzhou, there are still a large number of Persian and Arab businessmen coming to Datang to do business, so in this case, about 6,543,800 people moved south, which fundamentally changed the population distribution pattern of China with the Yellow River basin as the center of gravity, and the population distribution ratio between the north and the south of China reached a balance for the first time.

The third time: the end of the Song Dynasty.

In the "Jingkang Rebellion" at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, Jin Bang Nvzhen took advantage of the emptiness of the national strength in the Song Dynasty and took the opportunity to go south in a big way. Because of the massacre in Jinbang and the high-pressure policy, the Han people in Shandong and Henan followed the imperial court and migrated to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in large numbers.

At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Kublai Khan sent a large number of Mongolian soldiers to invade the south and launched a war to destroy the Southern Song Dynasty. The main battlefield is in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. In order to escape the war, local residents moved to the Pearl River Basin, mainly concentrated in Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian.

The fourth time: the great immigration in the early Ming Dynasty

In order to maintain his rule, Zhu Yuanzhang had to launch a large-scale migration, ordering people and soldiers to reclaim and guard sparsely populated areas. The scale of this immigration is unprecedented. According to A Brief History of Immigrants in China, in the early Ming Dynasty, there were 7 million immigrants from the Yangtze River valley, 4.9 million immigrants from North China and 6.5438+0.5 million immigrants from the northwest, northeast and southwest borders, totaling 6.5438+0.34 million, accounting for almost 20% of the total population at that time.

In most historical records in the late Ming Dynasty, we can often see the words "there were few people at the beginning of the opening of the dynasty", but after this great immigration, the economies of North China and Central China were restored. During the Yongle period, cities such as Beijing and Kaifeng gradually recovered their former prosperity.

The fifth time: Huguang filled Sichuan, "filling Kanggan prosperous time"

In the second year of Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty (1663), Dedi Zhang, the magistrate of Shuntian, was promoted to the governor of Sichuan. At this time, Sichuan has experienced decades of war since the end of the Ming Dynasty, and it is already "ten rooms and nine empty spaces". There were only a few hundred households in Chongqing, and there were often only dozens or even dozens of households in counties and counties, and some even had only one or two households. One of the consequences of sparse population is that tigers are rampant in Sichuan. During the Shunzhi period, Nanchong county recruited more than 500 people to reclaim and settle down, and 228 people were eaten by tigers.

With the encouragement of the government, a large-scale migration to Sichuan began. The policy reward for immigrants is quite attractive: immigrants don't have to pay land tax for five years. After the San Francisco rebellion subsided, the Qing government also announced that immigrants to Sichuan could be naturalized and take the imperial examinations. A couple gives 30 mu of paddy field or 50 mu of dry land, and if they have a son who can be Ding Zhuang's labor force, they will be allocated another four mu. Each household gives twelve taels of silver as the settlement purchase fee.

The sixth time: passing through Kanto, going west and going down to Nanyang.

In the same period, there were three different waves of immigrants in modern China, which people used to call "going to the East", "going to the West" and "going south to South Asia". Different from "Huguang filling Sichuan", these three migrations were all spontaneous.

Ride the wind and waves:

Customs is Shanhaiguan, and Kanto is today's three northeastern provinces. During the reign of Kangxi, the northeast was banned, and Han people were not allowed to enter the "land of Longxing" for reclamation and mining. However, it is still difficult to prohibit farmers from breaking the customs and farming land in the restricted area. In the last years of Xianfeng, the policy of lifting the ban encouraged immigrants to reclaim land. As a result, Shanhaiguan immigrants began to enter the northeast in large numbers.

After the Republic of China, the tide of immigrants rushing to Guandong became higher and higher, and hundreds of thousands of people moved to the customs every year. At the peak, millions of families from Hebei and Shandong move to the northeast every year.

Go west:

"Xikou" refers to the pass along the Great Wall west of Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province. Because of the large population and frequent famine in the Central Plains, refugees can cross the Great Wall through the west entrance to the Mongolian grassland and Hetao area to make a living. Xikou refugees came from all parts of North China, with Shanxi as the mainstream, and the refugee tide in Xikou lasted for 300 years.

Lower Nanyang:

These overseas immigrants have also become the first batch of China people with modern thinking. Since the late Qing Dynasty, outstanding Chinese in Nanyang have given back to the mainland, founded the earliest private enterprises in China, generously donated coastal defense and expanded overseas trade. Many Nanyang children later returned to China to participate in the revolution and the war of resistance.

During the Anti-Japanese War, there were as many as 3,000 overseas Chinese serving on the Yunnan-Burma Highway alone, and one third of them died there.

These six large-scale population movements in the history of China have had a far-reaching impact on promoting ethnic integration, adjusting population distribution, developing cultural exchanges and promoting economic development, especially on the origin of surnames and the development of genealogy culture, and also played a vital role in the formation and development of Chinese national concepts.