Xing Province, the word first appeared in the Jin Dynasty, is the abbreviation of "Xingzhongshu Province". When Genghis Khan destroyed the gold, he borrowed from this administrative system. After Wokoutai became The Great Khan, he divided the areas occupied by the Mongols into three administrative districts. By the time Möngke came to power, these three administrative districts were called "Xingshangshu Province". They are, Yanjing and other places are Xingshangshu Province, Bei lost Bali and other places Xingshangshu Province, and Amuhe and other places are Xingshangshu Province. Judging from this division, the management of the Mongols was very rough and easy to cause decentralization.
After Kublai Khan came to power, the situation improved. Kublai Khan had a strong desire for power, and he hoped to strengthen the centralization of power like the Han emperors, thereby consolidating Mongol rule. He established the name of the country, fixed the capital of the country, destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty, and finally ushered in the moment of the unification of the world. Next, he had to think about how to govern the world.
With the reunification of the North and the South, the division of the three administrative districts is clearly outdated, and new administrative bodies are needed. Probably in the later years of Kublai Khan's reign, he divided the world into 10 provinces. They are Lingbei, Liaoyang, Henan Jiangbei, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Huguang.
Seeing that this is not very familiar here, this division method has been used until the Ming and Qing dynasties. Some people may have realized why there are no Hebei, Mongolia, Shanxi, and Shandong in the 10 provinces. These places are close to the capital and are directly administered by Zhongshu Province, known as "Belly". The rulers of the Yuan Dynasty wanted to make "belly" a safe and prosperous area to protect the safety of the capital. Here, there are both mountainous and coastal areas, both fast land transport and convenient water transport.
In this way, in the later period of Kublai Khan's reign, the world was divided into 11 pieces, which marked the formation of the provincial system. Taking Zhejiang as an example, the full name in the provincial system is called "Zhejiang and other places in the middle of the book province", governing Hangzhou Road, unifying Hangzhou and other thirty roads and one government and two prefectures.
Here, another concept of "road" appeared, the road is the name of the administrative region, and Hangzhou Road is equivalent to the later Hangzhou Province. Generally speaking, the administrative divisions of the Yuan Dynasty were divided from high to low: Xingzhongshu provinces, roads, provinces, and prefectures. The road is divided into the upper road and the lower road, and the upper road is the upper road with more than 100,000 households in the jurisdiction, and the lower road is the lower road with less than 100,000 households. Since there was not much difference between the road and the prefecture, after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, there was no concept of "road".
The highest official of the province was called the Minister of Finance, an official from Yipin. The second in command is called "Pingzhang Zhengshi", and there are also right and left cheng. There are also a number of officials down there, with ranks from high to low. The power of the provincial chancellor was very large, and at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the emperor was afraid of his courtiers usurping power, and some provinces no longer set up a chancellor. By the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang simply abolished the official position of chancellor and changed his name to a university scholar.
After the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang followed the provincial system. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing dynasty rule continued the Ming dynasty's practice when formulating the administrative system at the provincial level.