Friends who have seen the ranking of China's top 100 counties know that Kunshan, Changshu and Zhangjiagang in Jiangsu are at the forefront of the list all year round. But many people don't know that these three top counties are managed by Suzhou City, or they are surprised to know. And the people in these counties also seem to call themselves "Kunshan people/ Zhangjiagang people / Changshu people", instead of saying "I am a Suzhou person". In fact, there is no mystery behind this, and even very natural, today we will explore it.
Present-day Suzhou City
"County-based" used to be the norm
As an administrative division, the county has an extremely long history, and as early as the pre-Qin period, there was a division of the county. The "city" that we are more familiar with is an administrative division that only existed in the Republic of China, and in the Qing Dynasty, people only knew that there were provinces and counties under the province, and they did not know the existence of "cities" at all. The modern writers who study in our language class often only mention that the writer is xx (province) xx (county) people, and the students know that Mr. Jin Yong is from Haining, Zhejiang, but they do not necessarily know that the county-level city of Haining is managed by Jiaxing.
During the Republic of China period, Dr. Sun Yat-sen's modern urban planning ideas contributed to the emergence of China's first city: Guangzhou. In the Qing Dynasty, Guangdong Province only had the division of "Guangzhou Prefecture", and the scope of Guangzhou Prefecture was much larger than that of the later Guangzhou City, including Shunde County, Nanhai County, Panyu County, Dongguan County, Zengcheng County and other counties.
Founded in 1921, Guangzhou took most of the former Nanhai County and Panyu County of Guangzhou Province, and many years later, the other counties that originally belonged to Guangzhou Prefecture either became districts and counties under the jurisdiction of Guangzhou City or Foshan City, or became provincial cities under the jurisdiction of Guangdong Province. The establishment of Guangzhou city set off a climax of changing the county into a city. For example, a part of Changsha County was taken to form Changsha City, which constitutes the prototype of the downtown area of Changsha today, while the remaining part of changsha county, the "mother", has a sharp reduction in jurisdiction and becomes a foreign county, and at the end of the 20th century, the "killing and arsoning Chang'an County" in the mouth of Xi'an urban residents used to be the mother county of Xi'an.
The administrative division of Suzhou is deduced
Back to the theme of this article: Suzhou area, although many cities appeared across the country during this period, smaller towns were still called counties. During the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou Prefecture, which covered the present-day city of Suzhou and part of Shanghai, was abolished by the Inspector of Jiangsu, who declared "Jiangsu independence" during the Xinhai Revolution, and Wu County, which originally belonged to Suzhou Prefecture, became the capital of Jiangsu Province the following year.
Suzhou Prefecture of the Qing Dynasty (lower right pink area)
According to the example of the city changed to a county above, I think you guessed correctly, Wu County, is the mother county of Suzhou City. In 1928, the Nationalist government established Suzhou City in the urban area of Wu County, which was abolished and merged into Wu County two years later, and in 1949, after the Battle of the River Crossing, the southern Jiangsu area was liberated, and the new government established Suzhou City again.
It seems to be just a back-and-forth change of the names of "Suzhou City" and "Wu County", don't worry, the complexity is still to come.
Along with The City of Suzhou, suzhou special districts were established, which, in addition to including Suzhou itself, also administered Wujiang County, Taicang County, Changshu County, and Kunshan County, which are now part of Suzhou District. If you are familiar with the ancient administrative divisions, you can imagine the special district as a prefecture, the county as a county under the prefecture, and the city of Suzhou as the seat of government.
In 1953, the big family of Suzhou Special District welcomed several new members: Wuxi, Yixing, And Jiangyin.
Yes, bulk Wuxi has also joined the Suzhou Special Zone Grand Alliance.
In 1956, Tao Du Yixing left the Suzhou Special District family and became a member of the Zhenjiang Special District family next door, but wu jin of the Zhenjiang family next door joined the Suzhou Special District. The following year, Shazhou County, the predecessor of Zhangjiagang City, was split from Jiangyin County and Changshu County.
1958 was a more important year: this year Wuxi County was assigned to the prefecture-level city of Wuxi, Wujin County was assigned to the Zhenjiang Special District next door, and at the same time, the six counties of Songjiang, Chuansha, Nanhui, Fengxian, Jinshan and Qingpu were assigned to the Suzhou Special District, and of course soon re-assigned to Shanghai.
In 1962, Wuxi County joined the Suzhou Special District again and for the last time. At this time, the internal pattern of Suzhou Special Zone is as follows
Suzhou City
Kunshan County
Wujiang County
Taicang County
Changshu County
Shazhou County
Wuxi County
Jiangyin County
Simply put, the Suzhou Special District at this time = today's Suzhou City + today's Wuxi City Xishan District Huishan District + Jiangyin. It was not until 1983 that Jiangsu Province implemented a new system of city management and county, and Wuxi County and Jiangyin County were once again assigned to Wuxi City, and the prefecture-level city of Suzhou was established at the same time.
Regional identity issues
It can be seen that in recent decades, Suzhou and its surrounding administrative divisions have changed drastically, some counties will belong to Suzhou Special District, one will belong to other special districts, the residents of these counties will not have a strong sense of identity with any one special district, the prevailing is the identification with the county, a person can not feel that he is a Suzhou person, and then feel that he is a Wuxi person and not a Suzhou person, so he only feels that he is a native of Jiangyin County, Jiangsu Province.
Although Kunshan Taicang and other counties are the "old faces" of the Suzhou Special District, the last time they were under the banner of "Suzhou" before the establishment of the Suzhou Special District was before the Xinhai Revolution, and the Suzhou provincial identity formed during the Ming and Qing dynasties has long been dissolved in the turmoil. Moreover, because China's urbanization rate was very low before the reform and opening up, the predecessors of prefecture-level cities, "xx special districts" and "xx areas", were essentially isolated islands of towns separated by large rural areas, and today's "same city" scene of different urban built-up areas in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta did not exist at that time. The exchanges between the people of the counties and the people of Suzhou are not so convenient. At the same time, the conceptual ambiguity caused by the prefecture-level city system invisibly strengthens the county identity of the people in the subordinate counties.
In short, which level of administrative division changes drastically, which level of regional identity will weaken or even disappear, giving way to the level of identity that has changed less or is more stable. For example, in modern times, the administrative divisions at the provincial level in the northeast region have changed extremely frequently and violently, but most of the residents in the northeast region are descendants of the "Breaking Kanto" who have only entered the northeast in modern times, and the regional identity at the county level is not strong, and it is impossible to take the position of provincial identity and replace it, so the "northeast people" identity that transcends the provincial border and the county boundary is formed.