Since the British launched the Opium War in 1840, the Qing government gradually degenerated into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. In such a social environment, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement led by Hong Xiuquan can be said to be unique, compared with other peasant uprisings in Chinese history, its scope of activities is wider, the scope of its influence is greater, and even established its own political power, so the question is, why can the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement last for more than ten years? This has to start from the unique language characteristics of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
In 1853, in order to curb the development of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's power, the Xianfeng Emperor ordered the Minister of Qincha, Qi Shan, to build a camp north of the Yangtze River to block the Taiping Army's northward march. But the Qing army soon discovered a serious problem, that is, even if they captured the soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, they could not understand their words at all, so what was going on?
It turned out that the main leaders of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, such as Hong Xiuquan, Shi Dakai, Li Xiucheng and others, were all Hakka from Guangxi, so the Hakka language was very popular within the Taiping Army at that time. After the Taiping Army conquered Yong'an City, Feng Yunshan, the King of the South, took the opportunity to propose to Hong Xiuquan that Hakka be used as the "heavenly dialect" of the Taiping Army, and proposed to Hong Xiuquan the two major advantages of using Hakka as a standard language:
First of all, Hakka dialect in China's local language system has long been a system of its own, in ancient times also known as "Tang Yin", and since the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom wants to show the difference from the Qing Dynasty, it should first distinguish from daily speech, so as to highlight the unique status of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom; Secondly, the use of Hakka dialect can also prevent the important secrets of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom from being leaked, and even if soldiers are captured by the Qing army in the future, they will not be able to obtain any valuable information because they do not understand Hakka.
Hong Xiuquan was deeply impressed by this, so he ordered the promotion of "Heavenly Words" as a standard term among the Taiping Army, which made it impossible for the Qing Army to collect any useful information in the early days. In a hurry, the Xianfeng Emperor used Zeng Guofan to organize local regimental training, and Zeng Guofan happened to know Hakka, so in the end Zeng Guofan became a major contributor to the suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Today, the Hakka dialect used by the Taiping Army is still used by 65 million people around the world, in addition to Liangguang and other places, it also has a wide base of use in Southeast Asia, South America and other places.