Where is the ancestral home of Shandong people?

According to historical records, the ancestral home of Shandong people is Sophora japonica in Hongtong County, Shanxi Province.

From the early years of Hongwu to the fifteenth year of Yongle, the Ming government carried out large-scale forced migration in Shanxi for 50 years, with a population of several hundred thousand, which was more than half of the land area of China at that time. At that time, because the Ming government concentrated these immigrants under the ancient pagoda tree in Hongtong County and took them away by force after registration, most descendants of immigrants took Hong Tong, the last place where their predecessors set out, as their ancestral home before moving out, and took this pagoda tree as a symbol of their ancestral home. Therefore, people commonly call this migration the migration of Shanxi Sophora japonica.

The reason why there is a saying that "Shandong people are mostly Shanxi people" can be traced back to the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty. At that time, there were four disasters in the Central Plains: flood, drought, locust plague and epidemic disease, and ethnic conflicts intensified. The Red Scarf Army uprising broke out and the Yuan government brutally suppressed it. After more than ten years of fierce fighting, Huaibei, Shandong, Hebei, Henan and other places suffered ten deaths and ten injuries, and then experienced the "July 8" in the early Ming Dynasty.