Most people think that Shenzhen is the reform and opening up that began its immigration history. In fact, Shenzhen's immigration history is more than 2,200 years old.
Since the Qin Dynasty, Shenzhen has experienced six major migrations, and it can be said that this place has been a place of immigration since ancient times. These six waves of migration have caused northern settlers from the yellow soil to the southern tip of the continent, near the blue ocean.
Before mass immigration, it was inhabited by ancient South Vietnamese.
The first wave of immigration came from the Qin Dynasty, about 2200 years ago.
In 219 BC, Qin Shi Huang, who had already pacified the Six Kingdoms, launched a war against South Vietnam, but he did not know that this southern expedition had become the most difficult and tragic battle in the Qin Dynasty's unification-war. First sent the general Tu Sui as the main general and Zhao Tuo as the deputy general, leading a 500,000-strong army to march south to Lingnan, not only the Qin army was defeated, but the main general Tu Sui also lost his life. So Qin Shi Huang sent Ren Huan as the main general, still partnering with the deputy general Zhao Tuo, and finally pacified Lingnan five years later. And set up three counties in Lingnan: Nanhai County, Guilin County, Xiang County.
The Shenzhen area belongs to Nanhai County.
The population is already sparse, and the war has made the young adults almost extinct. So the imperial court moved 500,000 people from the Central Plains. However, it was not so much migration as exile, because Lingnan at that time was very different from the comfortable and rich Central Plains.
Therefore, the first batch of immigrants was composed of three kinds of people: the first type of people were dismissed officials and court criminals, and being assigned to Lingnan was a means of punishment at that time: the second type of people with the largest number, were "Jia people", that is, merchants, who had a very low status among merchants in the Qin Dynasty, and were even classified as untouchables, and this prejudice against merchants continued until the Ming Dynasty in the long Chinese feudal society; The third kind of person is very interesting, at that time, in order to avoid too much gender disparity when immigrating, Namhae-gun once applied to the imperial court to allocate 30,000 single women, on the grounds that "sewing clothes for soldiers stationed in Lingnan" was not only to balance the imbalance between men and women, but also to stabilize the hearts of the frontier army. As a result, the widows and single women of the Central Plains who were approved also joined the earliest "branch" team.
The second wave of immigration in the Han Dynasty, especially after the fall of the Western Han Dynasty, after The so-called 'New Deal' after Wang Mang's usurpation of power, social unrest intensified, although the Eastern Han Dynasty once experienced guangwu Zhongxing, but eventually under the imperial power struggle and foreign invasion, the northern residents fled south. It dates back about 1900 years. The main body of the second wave of migration was northern farmers, who brought agricultural technology and production tools from the Central Plains and seeds of crops, which substantially improved the degree of agricultural civilization in the Lingnan region.
The third wave of immigration occurred during the Western Jin Dynasty. At that time, the imperial family of the Western Jin Dynasty entered the white-hot power struggle, known in history as the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings", which was one of the most serious imperial civil unrest in Chinese history, and the 16-year-long civil unrest caused serious damage to the social economy and people's lives at that time, and directly led to the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty and the turmoil of nearly three hundred years thereafter. The Western Jin Dynasty rebellion also created opportunities for the Xiongnu and other ethnic minorities to drive straight people for a long time, which caused the middle primitive spirit to be ruined, and the famous "Yongjia Nandu" occurred during the Yongjia period, which was also the first large-scale migration of residents in Chinese history.
During this southward migration, the main migrants remained in the Yangtze River Basin, but a few continued southwards to Lingnan in the Pearl River Basin, including the Shenzhen area. The third migration was the highest overall quality among the previous immigrants, and in addition to ordinary urban and rural residents, there were also a large number of Zhongyuan shi clans and official families.
Their entry into the area made the area more like a mature social dimension, the well into the surface has administrative needs, the establishment of Shenzhen's predecessor Bao'an County, it is also after this group of Western Jin Immigrants in the Eastern Jin Dynasty Xianhe six years (331), which is also the first time that the Shenzhen area has been kneaded into shape in the mode of administrative division.
Since then, the pace of immigration has temporarily stopped, and the one stop is more than 800 years.
The fourth migration was at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty. The Jurchens in the north established the Jin Dynasty and invaded the Northern Song Dynasty until the humiliating "Jingkang Revolution" occurred. In the second year of Jing Kang (127), the Jin people attacked the capital Kaifeng, and more than 3,000 people from the imperial family, including Emperor Huizong of Song and Emperor Qinzong of Song, as well as empresses and concubines, became prisoners and were taken to the Jin Kingdom. The only son of Emperor Huizong of Song who was not taken captive was Zhao Shuo the Prince of Kang, who was sent by the emperor to recruit soldiers in Hebei as a marshal of soldiers and horses, so he escaped one by one.
After that, Zhao Zhuo ascended the throne as Emperor Gaozong of Song, established the Southern Song Dynasty in Hangzhou, and fought against the Jin army using the Yangtze River as a boundary. When this Song Emperor Gaozong was unstable, he also launched a "Jianyan South Crossing", and the people of the Northern Song Dynasty continued to move south to stay away from the war.
The fifth migration was at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, which was almost a reproduction of the late Northern Song Dynasty.
When people look back at history, they often remember the phrase: "History is a long river", as if this is an indisputable truth, but the paradox of history is that it often shows another law of its: history is often a circle, and no one can jump out of this circle.
The Southern Song Dynasty is now beginning to face the same strange circle of their ancestors: the invasion of the Mongols.
At this time, the situation in the north changed greatly, the Jin people who had destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty were now facing the Mongols who were pressing forward step by step, and they were in the crisis of national subjugation, and the Southern Song Dynasty at this time seemed to be interested in using the Mongols to destroy the Jin people in order to repay the shame of the ancestors. So they chose a foreign policy of "united mongolia and destroying gold", and indeed two years later, the once invincible country of jackals was overthrown. Unexpectedly, they allied with another, more powerful Tiger and Wolf Division.
The year after the fall of the Jin Dynasty, the Mongol horseshoe stepped into the Central Plains and advanced southward, and the Southern Song army, which had neither combat strength nor war intentions, was defeated and retreated, and although it had more than forty years of resistance, the Southern Song Dynasty finally fell. The Mongols established the Yuan Dynasty in Dadu (present-day Beijing).
Once again, the war has brought hardships to the people, their lives to be threatened, and life to go on. Another move south became inevitable.
The two waves of migration in the Northern Song And Southern Song Dynasties far exceeded the sum of the previous three times, and also enabled the scale of Lingnan to basically take shape.
Another 400 years have passed.
During the Kangxi dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, this land welcomed its sixth group of northern immigrants.
Before this large-scale migration, the Shenzhen area had just experienced a reverse migration to the north, which was the "early Qing Dynasty boundary migration".
At that time, the Qing Dynasty had just entered the customs and overthrew the Ming Dynasty. However, the resistance of the Ming Dynasty did not all surrender its weapons, and the most influential of them was the famous anti-Qing general Zheng Chenggong, who crossed the Taiwan Strait under the pressure of the Qing army to the south, drove out the Dutch, and recovered Taiwan. Based in Taiwan, it constantly attacked and harassed the Qing army through the southeast coast, trying to reverse the Qing and restore the Ming Dynasty, which caused headaches for the Qing army.
As the Manchus of the horseback nation, the Qing army could run across the grasslands and even on land, but in the face of the vast sea, they seemed to have nothing to do except be dizzy.
The only strategy they could think of was to "ban the sea" and to "move the border" for this purpose.
In the eighteenth year of Shunzhi (1661), the Qing court decided to implement a policy of forced migration of coastal residents, moving the border 50 miles north, and the Shenzhen area happened to be in the relocation area.
Although almost all of them are immigrants, they have lived here for generations, and there are their re-established family businesses, such as fertile land, ancestral houses, fisheries, salt harvests, and ports for trade with overseas. Under the order to move the sea, many villages became ruins. How many coastal residents were executed for violating the will of "crossing the border" ("crossing the border" means escaping across the border) because they did not want to move north.
It was not until the Qing government unified Taiwan and ended the situation of cross-strait confrontation that Kangxi implemented the policy of "expanding boundaries", also known as "re-boundary", that is, allowing coastal residents who had been forced to relocate to their homeland and rebuilding their homes on large areas of abandoned land along the coast. After the exhibition, it officially ordered the opening of the sea trade. However, the effect of this "re-demarcation" is not ideal, first, the people have been chilled, afraid of changes in policies, and are unwilling to move back; Second, some indigenous people have died of poverty and illness in displacement. Although the government has introduced policies to encourage the reclamation of land, the number of people who have returned to the country is small.
However, the Hakka people, who were not affected by the migration to the sea, became the main body of this migration, and they traveled a long distance from the northeast of Guangdong to the central plains to become new residents of this land. Since then, the Hakka people have accounted for most of the indigenous people in Shenzhen.
The six waves of immigration that have lasted for more than 2,000 years have left many lamentable immigrants' blood and tears while the Shenzhen area has alternated in prosperity and decline.
No one expected that more than 300 years after the sixth great migration, reform and opening up brought about an unprecedented wave of immigration, the scale of which was beyond the first six immigration waves.
Another point that is very different from before is that the first six waves of immigration were passive and full of countless blood, while this great migration that began at the end of the 20th century was voluntary, full of hope, and the beginning of a dream.