China has a vast land area of 9.6 million square kilometers, which can be called a vast land and abundant products, in this vast world, whether it is lofty mountains or rivers, lakes and seas, it can be called everything.
In the southwest of China, there is the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as the "roof of the world", and in the southeast coastal area, it is the Jiangnan Water Town with small bridges flowing water and white walls. In the northwest region of China, there is a desolate Gobi full of yellow sand, and the dense Daxing'anLing in the northeast is one of the oldest and most famous primary forests in the world, and in general, the terrain is very rich.
Because China is too large in size and has a rich variety of terrain, most people living in this land since ancient times have used terrain to divide the area. For example, to the west of the Taihang Mountains is Shanxi, to the east is Shandong, to the north of the Yellow River is Hebei, and to the south of the Yellow River is Henan.
In addition, Hunan and Hubei provinces are divided by Dongting Lake, which was once the largest freshwater lake in China. In addition to the above mentioned above, China is divided into Guangdong and Guangxi provinces in such a way as north-south and east-west, but there is no "Guangshan" or "Guanghe" between them, so what does the "Guangdong" in Guangdong and Guangxi refer to?
To know the origin of the names of Guangdong and Guangxi and to understand the history of this region, we must first go back to the pre-Qin period. As we all know, Chinese civilization mainly originated in the Yellow River Basin, and then slowly expanded to the south, connected with the Yangtze River Basin, and eventually dispersed around, and even affected neighboring countries.
Because of the backward transportation conditions, the early Chinese ethnic groups had a very limited range of activities, like the Zhou Dynasty, the Chu state located in the area of present-day Hubei was regarded as a barbaric land, which shows that people mainly lived in the north at that time and lacked development of the south.
With the growth of population, the opening of roads, and the advancement of transportation methods, people gradually expanded to the south, but the scope was limited to the Yangtze River Basin, and the area further south was still inaccessible.
Of course, today's southern coastal areas still have residents at that time, their lifestyles are backward, and their distribution is intricate, so they are collectively called "Baiyue" by the people in the Central Plains. Today's Guangdong and Guangxi areas were at that time about the territory of the three branches of South Vietnam, Xi'ou and Luoyue.
After Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms, he felt that there were still many places in the world that needed to be conquered, so he fought the Xiongnu in the north and marched on Baiyue in the south. After occupying the Baiyue region, the First Emperor set up three counties in Lingnan, Nanhai, Guilin, and Xiang County, and in the Han Dynasty, Lingnan was further divided into nine counties. When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was in charge of the remote Lingnan Dynasty, he once issued an edict: "At the beginning of the opening of Guangdong, it is advisable to spread the letter of grace." Therefore, the Han Dynasty set up "Guangxin County" in the area of today's Wuzhou, Guangxi, which is exactly the meaning of "Guangxinxin".
Because Guangxin County was at the confluence of water and Yushui, the transportation status was very important, so Emperor Wu of han moved the seat of cangwu county to Guangxin county in the fifth year of the Yuan Feng (106), so that it had a very important position. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Han court carried out a redividing of the administrative areas of the world, and now many of the lands in Liangguang have been assigned to the jurisdiction of Jiaozhou, and Guangxin County has become the state of the entire Jiaozhou.
Later, Jiaozhou was occupied by Sun Quan, and he sent the Jiaozhou Assassin Shi Buqiu to move the Jiaozhou administration from Guangxin to Panyu on the southeast coast. During the reign of Sun Xiu, the third emperor of the State of Wu, the original Jiaozhou was divided more carefully, and most of today's Liangguang area is included in the newly established "Guangzhou", which is taken from Guangxin County. However, with the name, the division of Guangdong and Guangxi will not appear for a long time.
During the Tang Dynasty, the Lingnan region was subdivided into forty-five prefectures, which were under the jurisdiction of the five governors of Guangzhou, Guizhou, Rongzhou, Yongzhou, and Annan. In the third year of Tang Yizong's Xiantong (862), the imperial court roughly divided Lingnan Province into Lingnan East Road and Lingnan West Road, which is the earliest prototype of today's Guangdong and Guangxi.
However, the difference in area between Guangdong and Guangxi is now only less than 50,000 square kilometers, while the Lingnan West Road at that time included parts of present-day Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, Yunnan, Hainan, and even Vietnam, while Lingnan East Province only occupied a small part of the land in the east of present-day Guangdong, and the gap between the two was very large.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the imperial court may have also felt that the past division was unbalanced, so it took the old land of Guangxin County mentioned above as the central point, and the western part of Guangxin County was "Guangnan West Road", and the east was "Guangnan East Road". However, at that time, Guangnan East Road was still smaller than guangdong province today. During the Yuan Dynasty, the provincial system emerged, and most of guangxi is now classified as Huguanghang Province, while most of Guangdong is classified as Jiangxi Province.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang first included the area around today's Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan Island into Guangdong, and the general outline of Guangdong was gradually established at that time. On the other hand, the Ming Dynasty established the "Guangxi Chengzheng Political Envoy Department" and established the official name of Guangxi.
By the Qing Dynasty, the names of Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were widely adopted, and their jurisdiction was roughly determined.
All in all, the "Guang" in Guangxi, Guangdong, refers to Guangxin County, which was set up during the Reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and used as the basis for the division of the two Cantons during the Northern Song Dynasty.