What is the history?

Westbound is one of the five most famous migration events in China's modern history. In the long history of more than 400 years from the mid-Ming Dynasty to the early Republic of China, countless Shanxi people, Shaanxi people and Hebei people left their homes, which opened up the economic and cultural channel between the hinterland of the Central Plains and the Mongolian grassland and promoted the prosperity and development of the northern region.

In history, "westward", also known as "outward", refers to the immigration activities of people from Shanxi and Shaanxi to the Inner Mongolia grassland outside the Great Wall for reclamation and business.

There have always been different opinions about the location of the "West Exit". At present, the mainstream view is that the earliest "Xikou" refers to the "Xikou" of the Yellow River Ferry. It is clearly recorded in the "Walking West" of Shanxi Errentai that the route of Xikou is winding through the northwest of Shanxi and starting from Fugu (the ancient city) in northern Shaanxi.

Later, "Xikou" refers to the mouth of the Great Wall. Because the crowd is huge and complex, the exact meaning of "Xikou" is actually different for people in different regions. In a word, "Xikou" actually refers to all the passes from Qin Jin to Inner Mongolia.

Historically, Shanxi and Shaanxi, located in the Loess Plateau, are one of the cradles of Chinese civilization and the earliest developed areas in China. Farming civilization has a history of thousands of years.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, due to the narrow land and dense population and frequent natural disasters, many lower-class people left their homes and moved around.

From the geographical environment, Shanxi and northern Shaanxi are traditionally important dividing lines of agriculture and animal husbandry in China, with vast land outside the mouth and sparsely populated. For various needs, local people actively recruited mainlanders to cultivate seeds, but in the Qing Dynasty, due to immigration and other considerations, they gradually relaxed their policies and encouraged the development of agriculture.

So, people from Shanxi and Shaanxi called friends to introduce others and went to Guihua City Tumote, Chahar and Erdos to make a living.

The resultant force of the above factors led to the growing trend of "westward advancement" from the early Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China.