Are there really Fujian people in the world?

In different historical periods, the migration and mobility of Fujian population have different characteristics. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Fujian people were not afraid of the difficulties of the Shu Road, supporting the elderly and carrying the young, wandering in the ravine, stretching thousands of miles from Fujian to Sichuan. Behind this superhuman pioneering courage and fighting spirit, there are special historical reasons and backgrounds. Their migration motives and purposes are also different. From Jiadao to the early years of the Republic of China, through the efforts of several generations or even dozens of people in Sichuan and Fujian, it has made outstanding contributions to promoting the economic and cultural development of Fujian and Sichuan provinces. This paper intends to make a preliminary discussion on the reasons, background, motivation and purpose of Fujian people entering Sichuan in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, as well as the interactive effects of economy and culture in the two provinces, hoping to be beneficial to the study of population problems in Fujian and Sichuan.

First, the reasons and historical background of Fujian people moving to Sichuan

1. The long-term war has caused a sharp drop in the population in central Sichuan.

Before the Ming Dynasty, Fujian people may have entered Sichuan sporadically, so there is no historical record. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Fujian suffered a serious war disaster, and Zheng Chenggong's anti-Qing struggle in southern Fujian was very fierce. In the ninth year of Shunzhi (1652), Zhangzhou City was besieged for more than five months and starved to death. But in the eighteenth year of Shunzhi (1660), there were still1450,000 people with a population of 4.69 million. It can be seen that the total population loss is not too great [1]. The situation in Sichuan is very different. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Zhang Qijun established the Daxi regime in Sichuan. After the failure of the uprising, the Nanming regime and the rest of the rebels joined forces to fight against the Qing Dynasty. Later, Wu Sangui, the king of the day, contacted Geng Zhongjing, the king of Jingnan stationed in Fujian, and fought against the Qing Dynasty with Sichuan as the front line, making Sichuan a battleground for military strategists. To this end, the Qing army once entered Chengdu six times. Suffering from 37 years of war, the population in central Sichuan suffered heavy casualties; The bloody massacre was followed by a plague epidemic. The so-called "land of abundance" with a population of one million has only 50,000 tons of taxes, with a total of only 300,000 to 500,000 people, which is not 10% of the population when MCC flourished in the Ming Dynasty. As a result, many local officials have no governance by the people, and large tax provinces have no income. During the Shunzhi period, when Dedi Zhang, the governor of Sichuan, took office in Chengdu, he had to retreat to Baoning (now Langzhong County in northern Sichuan). It was not until the fourth year of Kangxi (1665) that his government moved to Chengdu, and it was not until the fifty-seventh year of Kangxi (1778) that Chengdu destroyed by the war was rebuilt.

In order to solve the problem of sparsely populated rice warehouses in Sichuan, in the early Qing Dynasty, shunzhi dynasty ordered "Huguang (now Hunan and Hubei) to fill Sichuan", and some local people in Huguang were "ordered" to enter Sichuan. In fact, this is a compulsory political immigrant. Subsequently, the three dynasties of Kang, Yong and Gan encouraged people from all provinces to migrate to Sichuan with more favorable immigration policies. For example, in the tenth year of Kangxi (167 1), it was written to the effect that "all poor people in all provinces who bring their wives and children into Sichuan for farming should be allowed to naturalize ... and their children should be allowed to take the integrated examination", and it was written in the fifty-first year of Kangxi (1772). During the Yongzheng period, a decree was issued that "all those who are in exile and are willing to reclaim land will give up their land for business". In the sixth year of Yongzheng (1728), in March, the Ministry of Housing approved "120 taels of silver for each household" as the resettlement fee. [2] In this way, from the twenty-first year of Kangxi (1682) to the Jiaqing period (1796- 1820), the immigration stopped, which lasted for more than 100 years. Sichuan immigrants are mainly Huguang people, with more in Jiangxi and Guangdong and less in Fujian. According to statistics, Fujian people who entered Sichuan only accounted for less than 5% of the total number of immigrants. According to the statistics of "hukou" in Sichuan Tongzhi during Jiaqing period, from the sixty-first year of Kangxi (1722) to the first year of Jiaqing (1796), the population of Sichuan increased by 25 1649 1, of which about 80% were immigrants from other provinces, that is, in 74 years. Together with the 6,543,800 Fujian defected officers and soldiers and their families (detailed later) who were sent to Sichuan for reclamation in Kangxi six years, the total number of Fujian immigrants to Sichuan is about 300,000. However, Fujian immigrants, who account for less than 15% of the total number of immigrants, have had a far-reaching impact on cultural exchanges between Sichuan and Fujian.

2. The land is narrow and the people are dense, and successive years of famine have forced Fujian people to move to Sichuan.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China began to enter the fourth disaster universe period. [3] With the substantial increase of population and the frequent occurrence of disasters, the scale of population mobility is also increasing. Since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the per capita arable land in Fujian has been very limited, and it has been greatly reduced since the Ming Dynasty. Xie's Five Miscellanies describes the migration and development of Fujian people in Guangdong and Guangxi, who were forced to go out to make a living because of the decrease of cultivated land. He said that Fujian people "have no land to support themselves on a narrow land, but the population has a broader way to make profits;" Which five are swimming and eating outside? "During the Wanli period," Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai were sparsely populated, less than one original province, so they had no skills to make ends meet, and they didn't go out and sell skills "; In Lianzhou, Guangdong Province, there are also people commonly known as "Ren Dong", who "live in the countryside, understand the Min dialect and support people by their jobs" [4]. These people who speak Fujian dialect, have skills and live in rural areas are the descendants of Fujian people living in eastern Guangdong. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, people in Fujian, Guangxi and other provinces regarded Ruijin area in southern Jiangxi as a paradise, and they lived here. Indigenous people, for the people; Farmers, businessmen, scholars and professionals are all Hakkas. " [5] In the six townships of Ningdu, Jiangxi, "the upper three townships are written, and the tenants in the lower three townships are connected to the people of Fujian" [6]. Even in the hinterland of Manchuria under the strict control of the Qing government, there are thousands of Fujian people who run industries and even settle down there. Emperor Qianlong was surprised but helpless when he heard the news. He said, "I heard that there are Fujian people living along the coast of Fengtian, and it has gradually become a village with more than 10 thousand houses." "This is because local officials rely on Fujian people to do trade for a living, and they can levy more business tax to keep them alive. If they don't ban it urgently, they will attract others and gather more and more. " "However, Fujian people have not lived there for a day, and there are many accounts, so they have not been expelled"; And "Jinzhou, Gaizhou, Niuzhuang and other places have Fujian merchant ships to trade there every year. There are unemployed Fujian people living there. " [7] This large-scale population movement reflects the obvious trend of Fujian people migrating to other provinces in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Even as early as the early Ming Dynasty, Fujian people entered Sichuan to make a living despite the dangers of the Shu Road, mainly concentrated in areas with good natural conditions such as Zizhong, Xinfan and Jianwei: "There were no aborigines in Zizhong for more than 600 years, and 67 of the 10 people in the Ming Dynasty came from Chu, and most of them came from Fujian, Jiangxi and Guangdong in the Qing Dynasty. The newcomers in the early Ming Dynasty are now called Sichuanese, and the rest are commensurate with their nationality. " [8] The population of Xinfan County in central Sichuan is mainly composed of immigrants from Hubei, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong and Shaanxi. [9] The "Annals of Jianwei County" on the bank of Minjiang River specifically lists all the guild halls established by immigrants by region. Huguang, Baoqing, Changsha, Jiangxi and Fujian have the largest population. Because the number of immigrants greatly exceeded that of locals, during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, immigrants from all ethnic groups were responsible for collecting special donations for the government. [ 10]

Fujian is located in tropical and subtropical regions with a hot climate. Large-scale epidemics and even infectious diseases often break out, which is also a place where plagues often occur. In the first month of the ninth year of Shunzhi (1652), Zheng Chenggong's army entered Haicheng because the tide in Zhangzhou suddenly rose by 5 feet. In the same year, Zhangzhou City was surrounded by Zheng Jun, and the grain and grass were exhausted, so that "people eat each other, and rice is worth five taels". When the Qing army was cleared, 730,000 skulls were collected in the city; Therefore, "the epidemic is so big that there are countless dead people." [1 1] In the fifty-seventh year of Kangxi (17 18), there was a flood in Yongding, Tingzhou, and numerous houses floated, which destroyed the Wolong Bridge in the city. Autumn Yongding "pandemic, more than 1000 people died." [12] In the eighteenth year of Qianlong (1753), a large-scale plague broke out in Haicheng, and "the dead were not counted". In the same year, there was also a plague epidemic in Quanzhou, "it will stop next autumn." [13] In July of the first year of Daoguang (182 1), there was an epidemic of plague in Fujian Province, and countless patients died suddenly because of vomiting and diarrhea. [14] In fact, as early as the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Xie wrote "Five Miscellaneous Notes", and he was deeply concerned about the plague in Fujian: "The most hateful people in Fujian customs, together with the plague, invited evil spirits and incense to serve the court, earnestly worshipped and made more matches. Turning a deaf ear to all medicine, I didn't know that this disease was caused by heat depression, so I threw in Tong Sheng powder to open a portal to vent yang without infecting it. And I want to close the door, smoke lamps and candles, and cook Artemisia vigorously, and ten people die. Fortunately, I got well. I made the witch do something, paste the boat with paper and send it to the water. Every time the ship leaves at night, people in the house close the door to hide. I walk in the country at night, but I don't care what I meet. Friends get drunk and then sing and dance, but they are also innocent. " [15]. Under the conditions at that time, there was almost nothing to do with the plague, so we had to turn to D. In order to avoid major infectious diseases such as plague, Fujian people had to fly far away, including distant Sichuan and other places.