Historically, migration due to plague, war, politics, environmental and other factors has been common.
The "Hongdong Locust Tree" immigrants of the Ming Dynasty and the "Lake Filling Sichuan" immigrants of the Qing Dynasty can be called large-scale and far-reaching super-large immigrants.
Today, we will talk about the migration of the large locust tree in Hongdong, Shanxi 600 years ago.
Hongdong, that is, Hongdong County, Linfen City, Shanxi Province, historically belonged to the largest county in Shanxi. The so-called Hongdong locust tree is a large locust tree that grew on the left side of the North Guangji Temple in Hongdong City, Linfen City, Shanxi Province in the old days.
In order to organize immigration, the Ming government set up a bureau station at Guangji Temple to issue licenses to immigrants, that is, to go through immigration procedures. The large locust tree in Hongdong witnessed the ups and downs of the ming dynasty's migration.
"Migrants to tun fields, reclaim wasteland". The purpose of the Ming Dynasty in organizing this great migration is very clear.
In the passage of time, the Yuan Dynasty came to an end, the people everywhere did not talk about life, the displaced people were everywhere, and the dead embraced the road. Coupled with the continuous natural disasters, the people rose up. Between the first year of the Yuan Dynasty (1264) and the tenth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1350), more than 100 peasant uprisings broke out in the Yuan Dynasty. Natural disasters and man-made disasters have caused the people to suffer unspeakable.
"The grass in the Central Plains is reckless, and the people are scarce", after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty regime, it was necessary to swallow the bitter fruit left by the Yuan Dynasty society.
What to do? Immigration became the only way out of this problem.
Shanxi is located between the Taihang Mountains and the Yellow River Gorge, with Mongolia in the north, Shaanxi in the west, Hebei in the east, and Henan in the south, which is a relatively stable place. When war raged elsewhere north of the Yellow River, Shanxi was relatively stable and a large number of displaced people poured in. Shanxi was like "Noah's Ark", which became one of the few places in the north at that time where the economy flourished and the people prospered.
Immigration exports, Shanxi naturally becomes the first choice.
During the Hongwu and Yongle years, the imperial court organized eighteen migrations in Shanxi. During the Hongwu period, the people of Shanxi were ordered to migrate, sometimes several times a year, and as few as once every three or five years. During the Yongle years, the intensity of migration in Shanxi weakened, but the source of migration was more extensive, and many people soon settled in Shanxi were ordered to move elsewhere.
In the Ming Dynasty, immigrants from Huguang and other places to Shanxi were often spontaneous acts, and the imperial court had many restrictions on this kind of behavior. However, Shanxi exported a large number of immigrants to the outside world, but it belonged to the state action, and the imperial court gave immigrants certain preferential policies and organized unified migration.
The common people pursue a home, food and worry-free life, has settled in Shanxi, suddenly want to move their families, immigrants are worried about the future days, most of them are in love with Shanxi.
It was time to leave his hometown, and the Guangji Temple, where the imperial officials were stationed, was still there, but his own home was gone. The large locust tree next to Guangji Temple bears witness to the unrelenting attachment of the migrants and the sorrows of the migrants when they leave their hometowns.
Birds have nests, while immigrants have no place to live. Towering locust trees and stork nests densely packed in the trees became the spiritual home of immigrants.
The Ming dynasty arranged for them to go to Henan, Shandong, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Anhui, Suzhou, Exiang, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia, as well as the three provinces of Jinzhong, Northern Jin, Inner Mongolia, and Eastern China, and as far away as Guangxi, with more than 500 counties.
Compared with the immigrants of the Western Han Dynasty and the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the footprints of Shanxi immigrants in the Ming Dynasty spread throughout most of China. How many people migrated from Shanxi in the Ming Dynasty is careless and not recorded in detail. However, we infer that in the fifty years from Hongwu to Yongle, the number and scale of shanxi immigrants definitely exceeded that of any other era in history.
The large locust tree has become a symbol of the migration of Hongdong people and Pingyang people, and has become the nostalgia of Shanxi immigrants.
With the change of the times, many migrants only remember that they came from Shanxi, because of the great immigrants of the Ming Dynasty and came to the current station, but they do not know where they came from in Shanxi. Whether they know it or not, the Big Locust Tree in Hongdong is still there, and the weight of the big locust tree in the hearts of the immigrants is still there, so later the Big Locust Tree in Hongdong has become the "root" of almost all Shanxi immigrants, and the status of the big locust tree is more important. The saying that "wherever there are Chinese, there are descendants of immigrants from the Hongdong locust tree" has also become very apt.
In fact, today's locust tree is in its third generation. Originally, the large locust tree next to Guangji Temple, like the temple, was destroyed by flooding. Later, next to the dry trunk, the roots of the tree gave birth to the second generation of large locust trees. Unfortunately, the second generation of locust trees gradually dried up and were blown down by the wind in the 1970s.
The big locust tree remembers the vicissitudes of the past, and its life is unyielding. Sure enough, the third generation of large locust trees slowly grew in the north of the second generation of locust trees, and it is still very luxuriant.
Because of this migration, the household registration in the Ming Dynasty increased significantly, a large number of barren farmland came back to life, and the economy of the north was gradually restored.
"Ask me where my ancestors came from?" Shanxi Hongdong large locust tree. What is the name of the ancestral home? Old stork nest under the big locust tree".
The longest road in the world is to leave home, and the world's saddest farewell is to never leave the hometown.
The big locust tree in Hongdong remembers the vicissitudes of the past.