Historical causes of enclosed houses in southern Jiangxi

Gannan wai houses were produced in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and now there are more than 500 houses, mainly distributed in Longnan, Dingnan, Quannan, Xinfeng, Anyuan and Xunwu.

Gannan, historically known as "there are hundreds of mountains in the south and Zhongzhou in the north, is the hub of Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong and Hunan according to the important links of the five mountains", so the county government was established in the Qin and Han Dynasties, and by the end of the Han Dynasty, there was a government-level administrative organization. In the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, the Central Plains declined, and Gannan was relatively remote and quiet. Therefore, it has become an ideal refuge for people who avoid chaos. A large number of refugees from the Central Plains poured into Gannan. By the early Northern Song Dynasty, the population of foreign immigrants had increased tenfold, which greatly changed the composition of residents and the traditional cultural structure at that time. As a result, in this specific historical and geographical environment, a new special ethnic group-Hakka has been slowly bred. At the same time and afterwards, Hakka ancestors or Hakkas who moved from the Central Plains to southern Jiangxi moved to western Fujian and eastern Guangdong. Compared with western Fujian and eastern Guangdong, which are both Hakka settlements, the time to establish a county was much earlier. The Qin Dynasty established Nanshu County (now Nankang or Dayu County). According to Huainanzi, in order to unify the south of the motherland, Qin Shihuang ordered Tu Youyou, a general, to lead a 500,000-strong army and March into Baiyue in five ways. After succeeding, he left "one army guarding the border of Nanshu". This is the earliest record in the history books that Han people from the Central Plains entered Gannan. This is the origin and predecessor of Hakka formation. In the later historical evolution, Hakka formed a unique group among the residents in southern Jiangxi, and the enclosed houses in southern Jiangxi formed a unique cultural landscape of Hakka dwellings. According to Wan Younan's investigation and study, enclosed houses, as the name implies, are closed houses. Its outer wall is not only the load-bearing outer wall of the enclosure, but also the defensive wall of the whole enclosure. Most of its gates have the titles of "Pan 'an Wai" and "Long Guangwei".