Southeast Asia is the "second home" of many Chinese people, and Southeast Asian countries have a constant relationship with China.
Due to historical reasons, the Chinese and overseas Chinese have become the most special existence in the international world, they carry the Chinese blood overseas, Chinese culture because of these countless Chinese people, spread to all corners of the world, the Oriental world from remote and mysterious to close at hand, leading generations of foreign adventurers to yearn for the paradise on earth - China.
In the Tang Dynasty, "all nations came to the dynasty" became commonplace, and the people at that time brought the calm self-confidence of the Tang Empire to the sea and land, bringing the self-confidence of the Tang people to the world.
In the Ming Dynasty, "Zheng He went to the West" directly exported Chinese culture to various countries, Xuanwei overseas, and popularized Nanyang, which was unattainable for Chinese dynasties.
While the countries of fanyu are envious of China's vast land and treasures, China also understands them in depth, because of China's strength and prosperity, with the deepening of China's international leadership, ordinary Chinese people can also understand many overseas anecdotes and local customs and customs.
It is precisely from this background that when rich China turned into a cycle of wars and wars, when the people were displaced, life was really difficult to maintain, they looked at the way of life and death in the neighboring countries, when the distance was not far away, Nanyang became the home of many fleeing Chinese, so the southeast Asian countries and China cut the relationship between the rational and chaotic in history, we are clothed with water, we are similar in blood, and moreover, our civilizations are extremely similar.
Read the texts to find the roots
The historical record of Nanyang can be traced back to the Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago, Sima Qian in the "History of Dawan Lie" recorded the southwest Yiqi, Ran, Migration, Qiong, Qiong, Kunming, Dian, Yue and other ten kingdoms, although the southwestern countries at that time are not equivalent to the current Southeast Asia, but as far as the Vietnamese now claim to be "descendants of Baiyue", Southeast Asia and the southwest region at that time were very closely related.
Ban Gu also records in the Book of Han Geography that the maritime trade carried out by Merchants of the Han Dynasty once spread throughout the countries of the South China Sea and the entire Indian Ocean. As early as the time when Zhang Qian opened the Silk Road, there were already trade exchanges between China and Burma, Vietnam and other countries, and in the last years of the Western Han Dynasty, because Wang Mang usurped the Han Dynasty, some scholars, officials and thousands of other people fled to Vietnam. The intersection of China and Southeast Asia during the Western Han Dynasty is the earliest recorded history.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Wuhu Disasters disrupted the Central Plains, and more Central Plains people moved to Southeast Asia. In the late Tang Dynasty, because of the Yellow Nest's attack on the Guangzhou area, the Guangzhou area was full of wars, and the people of Guangzhou fled to Southeast Asia. At the end of the Song Dynasty, the Mongol Iron Horse marched south to conquer, and after the destruction of the Southern Song Dynasty, a large number of remnants of the Song Dynasty also fell into this place.
In the sporadic fragments of Chinese history, our relations with Southeast Asia have long been complicated, and China's real "lower Nanyang" road was from the Ming and Qing dynasties to the Republic of China, during which the background of China became more and more complicated, and with more and more intersections with overseas, some frictions arose, and war was inevitable. Whether it is domestic or foreign wars, the ordinary people have been greatly affected, so the fleeing people and the fallen nobles have fled overseas, because of the geographical proximity of Southeast Asia and China, Southeast Asia has become the most suitable migration destination and a pure land for refuge in Chinese.
Chinese this migration is historically known as the "Lower South Sea". "Going to Nanyang" has also become the most special piece of China's past.
In order to find a way to survive in the South Seas
Although the history of "Lower Nanyang" can be traced back to the Han Dynasty, its characteristics and expansion refer to the period from the Ming Dynasty to the Republic of China.
The main immigrants to the "Lower Nanyang" were people from the southeast coastal areas, including Cantonese and Fujianese. First of all, calling Southeast Asia "Nanyang" was a common name in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Under this title, it can be seen that at that time, we defined the surrounding countries with China as the center. Because China was still strong at that time, the rulers of the authorities considered themselves to be "the kingdom of heaven and heaven.". "Nanyang" mainly includes the Malay Archipelago, the Philippine Archipelago, the Indonesian Archipelago and the Indochina Peninsula and the Malay Peninsula. The countries included are mainly Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Java, Sumatra and other places have appeared Chinese settlements. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the government promulgated the policy of sea ban on many times, but due to the prosperity of overseas trade, the number of people going to Southeast Asia continued to increase. Later, because the anti-Qing movement of the Han people was very active at the end of the Ming and early Qing dynasties, a large number of refugees and peasant armies scattered by the Qing soldiers, as well as the remnants of the Ming army who failed to resist the Qing Dynasty and the remnants of the Ming Dynasty who did not want to bow down to the knee fled to Southeast Asia in large numbers, so it set off a climax of immigration to Southeast Asia.
At the time of the Ming Dynasty's crisis, Chen Shangchuan, who was the commander-in-chief of gao, Lei, and Lian, and chen anping, led more than 3,000 soldiers and families and more than 50 warships to emigrate to the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam, which was called "Ming Township".
After the overthrow of the Ming dynasty, the Yongli Emperor was forced into exile in Burma, where there were still relatives of officials and soldiers who followed him, some of whom fled to Siam and the other in remote areas of Burma. It is said that most of the Gui and Min families in northern Myanmar today are descendants of these officers and soldiers.
Although at this time many people fled to Southeast Asia in batches because of the war, according to the 1935 survey of the reasons for the displaced people to go abroad by the China Pacific Society, 69.95% of the people went abroad because of "economic oppression", and at that time, more people could not live in their hometowns, they would try their best to find a way, they did not lose hope in life, and they still went to the South China Sea with a pure heart to find the opportunity to turn the tide against the wind. They long for a fair and pure soil for them to take root, and to be able to work hard to support their self-made dreams, not only for themselves but also for their families to fight for a peaceful and peaceful living environment.
Humiliated in modern times, forced to go abroad
Europe had taken the lead in establishing capitalism when China was still a feudal society, and entered the industrial age, starting the colonial journey. In Britain, after the Dutch colonized Southeast Asia, they stepped up the opening of trading ports in Southeast Asia and accelerated the development process of the entire Southeast Asia, and they attempted to integrate the Far East into the entire world colonial trade system. In the process of construction and development, the demand for labor is very alarming.
However, the black slave trade in Africa had already declined at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, and Western colonists turned their attention to the populous China. In order to attract more Chinese workers who come here for employment, various countries in Nanyang have successively introduced a series of preferential policies.
It is recorded that Sarawak, the largest state in the Federation of Malaysia at that time, issued a special notice during the reign of Bharata II: to give immigrants enough free land to plant, the government to provide temporary housing to resettle immigrants; free rice and salt for one year; to provide transportation, to establish a police station to protect the safety of the Chinese, and to permanently live in Sarawak.
Such a policy gave enough attraction to the Chinese people in Nanyang, who themselves had difficulties in surviving under the suppression of China's power, and saw the hope of survival, and many people took their wives and children to work in the south, and some even abandoned their wives and children and embarked on the ship to Nanyang alone with their enthusiasm.
In any case, before this, most of the Chinese people voluntarily went to Southeast Asia, but after that, China's national sovereignty was once threatened, and in the more than two hundred years after the Qing government occupied the Central Plains and established political power, the capitalist countries developed rapidly, and China could no longer be as tough as the previous dynasties, and looked at the world in a dominant manner. A series of unequal treaties were signed one after another, and it was in this context that Chinese workers who went to Southeast Asia were called "contract Chinese workers" commonly known as "piglets".
According to the "History of the Late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China", in the early 1820s, before and after the succession of the Daoguang Emperor, the so-called "Great Qing Empire" was already in a downward trend, with harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the people were not happy, the class contradictions were very serious, the noble landlords single-handedly covered the sky, and the people could only be oppressed and humiliated.
After the Opium War, each of the land cession reparations increased the burden of life of the people, and among the unequal treaties that the Qing government was forced to accept was a clause that allowed the great powers to recruit Chinese workers on the southeast coast and to sign contracts.
These imperialists successively set up recruitment offices on the southeast coast to lure the poor into signing contracts, so that many people became so-called "piglets". They deceived and kidnapped Chinese workers and smuggled them to Southeast Asia, withholding their wages as expenses for overseas travel. In modern times, the foreign Chinese workers are almost indistinguishable from the black slaves who were trafficked during the "triangle trade" in those years, and those imperial colonists used their usual treacherous faces to carry out the most barbaric acts of trafficking in the name of civilization.
The "History of Overseas Chinese in Guangdong" records:
"At that time, it took more than a month to take a boat from Hong Kong to San Francisco, and such a long period of torture often killed thirty or forty of the 100 people. Once when the ship arrived at the port of San Francisco, the crew opened the hatch, and suddenly a stink rushed up from the bottom of the bilge, and seven or eight Chinese workers with bloodstained faces were lying horizontally and vertically, and the bodies were decomposing. ”
If we imagine it now, we may really find it hard to believe that such a cruel thing has really happened to our predecessors, the sorrow of the country, the humiliation of the nation, and nothing is more so.
The reason why history is called history is only to tell people that what they have experienced has become the past, we can no longer change, no matter whether the Chinese nation's past is prosperous or humiliated, those histories are imprinted and talked about by us, but in the end it cannot be changed.
After the establishment of the Republic of China, the situation of selling "piglets" gradually declined, free immigrants rose, and the development of Chinese society in Southeast Asia was good, and many people went to Southeast Asia to develop through kinship. When a large number of Chinese poured into Southeast Asia, it really had a great impact on the production and life of Southeast Asia.
Many Chinese in Southeast Asia to carry out commercial trade, using the most intelligent minds of the Chinese people, the local native products to China, from China to bring the most exquisite items to sell to Southeast Asia, because of the overseas Chinese merchants' business activities, Southeast Asia and China's trade network has been flourishing from ancient times to the present.
In addition to some Chinese engaged in business, most of them are engaged in handicraft activities, and the Chinese who go to Southeast Asia are almost all over the industry, which has had an important impact on the economic development of Southeast Asia. In the field of industry and mining, it is also due to the hard work of the Chinese, resulting in Malaysia's tin production accounting for more than half of the world's total production for a long time.
Blood and love, it is difficult to give up
Many Overseas Chinese have changed the original low status in Southeast Asia with their efforts, not only have more say in various fields, but also for some royal nobles in Southeast Asia, they are the existence of wisdom and ability. They rely on the Chinese's sensitivity to establish themselves in Southeast Asia, of course, they have not forgotten the motherland that is thousands of miles away, that is, the mother who raised them, and they have a constant blood relationship with them.
So in modern times, when the motherland was shrouded in darkness by disasters, they did not sit idly by, and they still stretched out their hands in Southeast Asia to break the trembling nightmare for the mother of the motherland and bring a long-lost warmth to China.
In xishan park in Kunming City, Yunnan Province today, there is a 9-meter-high monument and 3 meters high "Nanyang Overseas Chinese Mechanics Returning to Japan to Resist Japan", which was built in 1989 and records the story of 3,200 young overseas Chinese mechanics from Malaysia, Singapore and other Southeast Asian regions in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
In this aid war, more than 1,000 overseas Chinese compatriots sacrificed their most vivid lives for the mother of the motherland, leaving indelible merits in the history of China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
Chinese wisdom, achievement of "Nanyang"
In Wenchang, Hainan, there were 1.2 million Wenchang overseas Chinese in Nanyang, and even those who are not familiar with Wenchang today know that Hainan Wenchang is known as the "hometown of overseas Chinese", and the footprints of 1.2 million Wenchang overseas Chinese are spread to more than 50 countries in the world.
Wenchang people have said that when you open the history of Wenchang, there are shadows of overseas Chinese on almost every page, the most famous of which is the protagonist Song Yaoru in the CCTV TV series "Song Yaoru Father", because his journey to Nanyang has enabled the entire Song family with the three Song sisters as the core to influence modern China for more than a century.
Because of various reasons to move to Southeast Asia Chinese, and strive to take root in the unfamiliar soil, with the development of history, the unremitting efforts of the Chinese, their status in Southeast Asian countries is getting higher and higher, they are changing Southeast Asia at the same time, Southeast Asia has also changed their family destiny.
In the thousands of years of history of China and Southeast Asia, Chinese culture has gradually penetrated into this region, and has had a wide and far-reaching impact on Southeast Asia in terms of politics, economy, science and technology, craftsmanship, literature, religion and so on.
For example, in Vietnam's administrative system, the administrative division of the land, the imperial examination system, and the promotion of Confucianism are closely related to Chinese culture.
Architecturally, Chinese architectural styles can be seen in cities and royal palaces in many Southeast Asian countries. What's more, most languages in Southeast Asia have a large number of Chinese loanwords. All of these represent the integration of Chinese immigrants with this part of Southeast Asia.
For now, when we talk about Southeast Asia, we must also talk about the Chinese people in Southeast Asia, although they have lived overseas for generations, but their "local" complex for the land of China has not weakened.
Most of the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia still speak Chinese, they live the same festivals as China, and on certain days they will return to their hometowns to worship their ancestors and find belonging. What is proud of is that the migration activities of overseas Chinese and overseas Chinese "going to Nanyang" have not only enhanced the friendly and neighborly relations between China and Southeast Asia, but also made important contributions to the cultural integration of the whole world.
epilogue:
In the new century, the footsteps of Chinese "going to The South China Sea" are still continuing, and they leave their hometowns with the same mood as their ancestors to study, work, and do business, just to pursue the dreams in their hearts.
"Lower Nanyang" has become China's modern history and "into the Guandong", "go to the west" and called the three major waves of immigration, compared with the first two, the people of "lower Nanyang" is going overseas, "breaking into the Guandong", "going to the west" brings more is the cultural integration of different parts of the Chinese nation, but the pattern of "going to the South Sea" is broader, the whole of Southeast Asia in the infiltration of Chinese culture, more like a family relationship with water, no matter in which aspect can find clues.
The inseparable humanistic relationship between China and Southeast Asia should serve as a driving force for jointly promoting Asian culture to the world in modern society, rather than a contradiction between Asian countries competing for cultural sources.
References: Sima Qian, Biography of Dawan Lie, Ban Gu, Book of Han, Geography, History of the Late Qing Dynasty, History of Overseas Chinese in Guangdong