Modern girl in Shanghai during the Republic of China
Fact one
Where do Shanghainese come from?
We all know that before the opening of the port in 1843, Shanghai was a sparsely populated place, and Shanghai County at that time was very small and the population was very small.
Later Shanghainese were actually foreigners.
Yes, Shanghainese come from out of town.
So, where did the Shanghainese come from?
The answer is: 80% of Shanghainese come from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Among them, Ningbo has the largest number of people, followed by Shaoxing people, Suzhou people, Northern Jiangsu people, Anhui people, Guangdong people, and so on.
In 1948, the total population of Shanghai was 4.98 million, of which 1 million were Ningbo, accounting for 20%, that is to say, in 1948, there were 2 Ningbo people for every 10 Shanghainese.
However, this is not to mention, in the past 70 years, there has been a steady stream of Ningbo people moving into Shanghai, so it is generally believed that about 30% of today's Shanghainese are Ningbo people or descendants of Ningbo people.
This is not surprising, it is in line with the economic law: in the era of underdeveloped transportation, most people are making a living nearby, 80% of Shanghainese are from neighboring Zhejiang and Jiangsu, and 80% of Hong Kong people are from Guangdong Province, and 80% of Hunan people are from Jiangxi Province, and similar phenomena, in fact, the same truth: economic laws.
In short, 80% of the ancestors of Shanghai people are from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, of which Ningbo is the most. This is the conclusion.
Fact two
Shanghai is a land that was formed relatively late
In fact, not only are Shanghainese foreigners, but even the land of "Shanghai" is relatively new.
Yes, the land of Shanghai, in ancient times, originally did not exist, in fact, it was gradually formed in a relatively recent period.
Before 6,000 years, Shanghai only had today's Three areas of Qingpu, Songjiang, and Jinshan, which were basically landed.
That is to say, even 6,000 years ago, the three plots of land in Qingpu, Songjiang and Jinshan were still partly in the state of seawater soaking and semi-soaked beaches.
This is called a beach
It was not until 3000 years ago, that is, during our Zhou Dynasty, that the three regions of Jiading, Minhang, and Fengxian gradually formed land, noting that "gradually and basically forming land", that is, even during the Zhou Dynasty, the three plots of Jiading, Minhang, and Fengxian were still partly in a state of tidal flats.
In our Zhou Dynasty, Baoshan, Changning, Putuo, Jing'an, Pudong, Xuhui, Hongkou and other places were still below sea level, that is, it was still shallow, in other words, if you travel through time and space and return to the center of Shanghai in the Zhou Dynasty, you will find that this is actually a shallow sea.
Yes, the vicissitudes of mulberry fields.
That is to say, this piece of land in the center of Shanghai has actually been gradually formed in the past 2,000 to 3,000 years.
Old photos of the outskirts of Shanghai
So, maybe you will break the sand pot and ask the end: why is it "gradually formed"? What drove the formation of this land in downtown Shanghai?
The answer is: the accumulation of silt at the mouth of the Yangtze River.
Yes, it is because the silt of the Yangtze River has accumulated over the years that the land in the center of Shanghai has been "arched", to put it bluntly, it is the power of the yangtze river water.
It can be clearly said that without the Yangtze River, there would be no Shanghai.
Fact three
Why did foreigners love Shanghai back then?
So, why did the British colonists take a fancy to Shanghai?
I have analyzed with you in previous articles, because Shanghai is the mouth of the Yangtze River, and the British control of Shanghai indirectly control the initiative of the trade of goods in the entire Yangtze River Basin.
However, this is only a very general analysis, and today, Lao Feng tells you two specific reasons to help you deepen your understanding.
One of the specific reasons: in the late Qing Dynasty, the raw silk mainly supplied for export in the Qing Dynasty was produced in the vicinity of Nanxun Town, Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, which is obviously closer to Shanghai (Nanxun to Shanghai is only 120 kilometers), the traffic is more convenient, raw silk from Huzhou Nanxun to Shanghai, arrived quickly, saving freight and time.
As shown in the picture, Nanxun in Huzhou is only 120 kilometers away from Shanghai
The second specific reason: when the British purchased tea from daqing, mainly to purchase tea from Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and other provinces, these are the provinces of the Yangtze River Basin, tea is transported from the waterway to Shanghai, very convenient, much more convenient than Guangzhou.
In contrast, the old foreign trade center of Guangzhou, in contrast, was too inconvenient, the transportation cost was high, and the protracted period was why the British colonists did not hesitate to launch a war, but also forced the Qing dynasty to abolish the national policy of "Guangzhou one mouth trade", because it directly touched the commercial interests of the British.
Fact four
What is "one city, three governance"?
There are some elderly people in Shanghai who should remember the saying of "one city and three governances".
Yes, in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Shanghai was for a long time in a state of "one city and three governances", that is, in the old society of Shanghai, there were three governments at the same time, which were:
The first government, the French Concession, ruled by French colonists, passed the laws of the French colonists, and was administered by the French patrol house.
The second government, the Public Concession, ruled by the "Ministry of Works" organized by the British colonists, passed through the laws made by the British colonists.
The third government: the Chinese community. That is, the jurisdiction of the Qing government's "Shanghai County".
Shanghai's French Concession, Public Concession, And Chinese Concession
So in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Shanghai was actually a deformed city, it had three governments at the same time, and it was a very complex system.
That's why in Shanghai at that time, there were some gray areas that these three governments were unwilling to manage, and these gray areas gave rise to gangster forces such as Du Yuesheng, Jin Jinrong, and Zhang Xiaolin.
Fact Five
Why do shanghai have many descendants of Cantonese people?
What is less well known is that some of our Shanghainese today are descendants of Guangdong people, although there is no accurate statistics, but the data of many samplings show that today's Shanghainese ancestors in Guangdong should be between 5% and 9%.
Reading this, history buffs may be sensitive to the following people:
Ruan Lingyu: Shanghai film star during the Republic of China period, born in Xiangshan, Guangdong (now Zhongshan).
Ruan Lingyu
Liu Lichuan: The leader of the Shanghai Knife Society Uprising in the late Qing Dynasty, and a native of Xiangshan, Guangdong.
Zheng Guanying: A thinker living in Shanghai in the late Qing Dynasty, the author of "The Dangerous Words of the Prosperous World", and a native of Xiangshan, Guangdong.
Zheng Guanying
Hu Die: Shanghai film star during the Republic of China period, born in Heshan, Guangdong, is also a Guangdong native.
Hu Butterfly
So, this is interesting: Guangdong is more than a thousand kilometers away from Shanghai, the traffic is very inconvenient, it does not conform to economic laws, ah, why in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there were so many Cantonese in Shanghai?
What's going on here?
Old Feng told you the answer today.
The answer is interesting, here's how it turned out to be:
It turned out that before the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty implemented the policy of "one-mouth trade" to the outside world, that is, all foreign trade transactions were limited to Guangzhou, which is why before the Opium War, almost all the compradors were Cantonese.
Speaking of this, by the way, what is called "comprador". The comprador is equivalent to the Chinese manager in today's foreign company. Before the Opium War, foreign merchants hired a large number of people who knew English in Guangzhou to help these foreign merchants buy goods and handle various affairs, so they were called "compradors", that is, today's employees of foreign enterprises.
Well, let's get back to the point, before the Opium War, foreign trade was limited to Guangzhou, the compradors of foreign merchants, almost all of them were Cantonese, after the Opium War, Shanghai opened a port, foreign businessmen believed: Shanghai's trade convenience is much higher than Guangzhou, so foreign businessmen like carp across the river, have migrated to Shanghai.
However, the Guangdong compradors, who have cooperated with foreign businessmen for many years, have long established trust with each other, and the cooperation is pleasant, and they cannot give up. Therefore, the foreign merchants brought these Guangdong compradors, dragging their families and mouths, to Shanghai and continued to hire them.
That's why at the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were many, many Cantonese in Shanghai.
At the beginning of the opening of the port, the population of Shanghai was mainly people from these three places: Ningbo people, Jiangsu people, and Guangdong people. Anhui people that is still later.
Among them, among the Cantonese people, the Xiangshan people are the most numerous.
(Note: Xiangshan County in the Qing Dynasty, including today's Zhongshan and Zhuhai)
It is worth noting that after the opening of the port of Shanghai, the Cantonese who migrated from Guangdong to Shanghai to make a living with the current were not all compradors, and many businessmen were also brought along.
For example, Liu Lichuan, the leader of the Knife Society, a native of Xiangshan, Guangdong, was originally in the sugar tea business, and he went to Shanghai with the tide of foreign merchants and Guangdong compradors.
In addition, there were some Guangdong merchants of the "Thirteen Lines" who also followed them to Shanghai, and in addition, there were some Chaozhou merchants who also went to Shanghai and monopolized the pawnshop industry in Shanghai.
So, at the beginning of the opening of the port, how many Cantonese people came to Shanghai?
Historical data show that in the first 10 years of the opening of the port, there were already 80,000 Cantonese people in Shanghai, of which more than 20,000 were from Xiangshan.
At the end, Lao Feng added something interesting: in 1853, the Shanghai Knife Society Revolt, the leader of the uprising, Liu Lichuan, was a Native of Xiangshan, Guangdong, and Liu Lichuan's enemy: Wu Jianzhang, who was then the Shanghai Daotai, was also a Native of Xiangshan, Guangdong.
Fellow countrymen beat fellow countrymen.
Wu Jianzhang himself is actually the epitome of Cantonese immigrants to Shanghai. This man is very interesting, he is not a scholar, Wu Jianzhang sold chickens in the provincial city of Guangzhou in his early years, and later learned English, to foreign merchants as a comprador, after the opening of the port in Shanghai, Wu Jianzhang followed the current, went to Shanghai to do comprador, this person in Shanghai official addiction attack, spent money to buy a "standby Daoist", then called "donation official", then, the knife will revolt, Liu Lichuan will arrest this Wu Jianzhang, imprisoned, dramatically, Wu Jianzhang successfully escaped from prison, moved to rescue the soldiers, defeated the knife society, killed Liu Lichuan.
Fact Six
How was the Shanghainese dialect formed?
Suppose we travel through time and space, back to Shanghai in 1842, and the people of Shanghai County, speaking Shanghainese, people basically can't understand, do you know why?
The answer is: because in 1842, there was no such thing as "Shanghainese".
Originally, Shanghainese dialect was also gradually formed after the opening of the port in Shanghai and in the long river of years.
It didn't exist in the first place.
What is less well known is that before the opening of the port in Shanghai County, the people of Shanghai spoke Songjiang dialect.
After the opening of Shanghai in 1843, a large number of Ningbo and Suzhou people poured into Shanghai, completely subverting the demographic structure of Shanghai, several groups of immigrants arrived at a place at the same time, and the dialect "hybridization" phenomenon occurred, so the local Songjiang dialect of Shanghai was integrated with the Dialects of Jiangsu and Zhejiang such as Ningbo dialect and Suzhou dialect, and finally formed today's Shanghai dialect.
For a typical example, the Shanghainese word for "Allah" (I) actually comes from Ningbo.
Fact Seven
What is the ghost of "Pidgin English" in Shanghai?
History buffs have heard of something called "pidgin English."
So, what is the so-called "pidgin English"?
The red line is the pidgin of the past
First of all, we need to figure out what is called "pidgin".
The so-called "Pidgin" is a river in the early days of Shanghai's port opening, this river is north of Shanghai County, once the boundary river of the French Concession and the public concession, and later this river was filled in by the concession authorities in 1914 and became a road, which road? It is today's Yan'an East Road.
Pidgin old photos
Yes, the once famous Pidgin is today's East Yan'an Road.
Well, this is "Pidgin", once a river, which no longer exists, is filled in, and has become a road (East Yan'an Road).
Canghai Mulberry Field, today's East Yan'an Road
So, what is "pidgin English"?
In fact, because in the late Qing Dynasty, "Pidgin" was the boundary river between the public concession and the French Concession, where there were the most foreigners and the most Shanghainese who dealt with foreigners.
At that time, Shanghainese had never learned English since childhood, so according to the grammar habits of Shanghainese, they pieced together English words and spelled out a kind of "Shanghainese English", because they spoke the most near "Pidgin", so it was called "Pidgin English".
For example, the Shanghainese of the late Qing Dynasty said:
Twenty dollars one month, eat you, sleep you.
In fact, what Shanghainese want to express is "24 yuan a month, eat your house", that is, "24 yuan / month + package to eat and wrap", but from the British, it sounds like they want to eat him and sleep with him. It's ridiculous.
It's just that the British at that time were also used to it, they could understand, they could understand, even if they came to China to make money, not to correct the English of the Shanghainese, they didn't bother to correct you, so they were not more real.
Well, today Old Feng will code words for you here, and tomorrow I will talk about it.