Portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang
Throughout Hunan Province, it has been said that Zhu Yuanzhang's bloodbathed Hunan during the Hongwu period in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, which led to a large decrease in population and emigration from other provinces. The most typical example is "pulling Jiangxi and filling Hunan". As a result, the residents of Hunan Province and Jiangxi Province have become "old cousins" relations. However, this history is rarely recorded in official history books, perhaps because history was written by the victors and dare not be said. However, many of the immigrant genealogies in various parts of Hunan Province clearly record that their ancestors immigrated from Jiangxi, especially in Ji'an Taihe County. According to folklore experts, the gooseneck mound is actually a large field, and people who set off from Jiangxi in that year concentrated in this mound field, so most of the descendants of Jiangxi immigrants who later migrated to various parts of Hunan took the gooseneck mound as the ancestral home of the family.
Statue of Zhu Yuanzhang
In Hunan Province, as a case of "blood washing Hunan", there are stories and legends such as blood washing Xiangtan, blood washing Pingjiang, blood washing Yueyang, blood washing Changsha, blood washing Liuyang, and blood washing Changning. None of this exists in the official records, but is passed down by word of mouth or recorded in the genealogies of various ethnic groups. As for why Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to wash Hunan in blood, the reason has always been a mystery, and even historians have summarized several statements, right and wrong, and it is difficult to say clearly. At present, there are four main statements:
Ming Xiaoling Shinto
The first is revenge on Chen Youyi's supporters
At that time, Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youyu competed for the world, Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi were Chen Youyu's territory, the people here supported Chen Youyu a lot, and Chen Youyu was Zhu Yuanzhang's most difficult opponent, and later through the Battle of Poyang Lake, Zhu Yuanzhang successfully eliminated Chen Youyu, and his son Chen Li surrendered. However, the victor Zhu Yuanzhang retaliated by increasing taxes in Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi, and massacring the people. However, Chen Youyu and Zhu Yuanzhang competed for the main battlefield of the world in Hubei and Jiangxi provinces, and Hunan was in a remote corner, so why he wanted to retaliate against the residents of Hunan Province was inexplicable.
In front of the temple in Changning City, Hunan Province
The second is to mock Zhu Yuanzhang's claim that Empress Ma Niangniang is Bigfoot
It is widely said that Zhu Yuanzhang's empress Ma Niangniang was a bigfoot woman, and there was a Lantern Festival one year, and the city of Nanjing was full of lights and joy. In a place called "Hunan Street", someone made a lamp for a bigfoot woman riding a horse holding a pumpkin. Immediately, a horse shooter reported to Zhu Yuanzhang, saying that the bigfoot woman was referring to the horse queen, and holding the pumpkin in her hand meant that Zhu Yuanzhang was in Guazhou.
Zhu Yuanzhang was furious when he heard this, and immediately sent a message to his subordinates, ordering "Hunan Street to kill everything", and when the officials handling the affairs heard it, they thought that "all hunan was killed", but they did not dare to disobey the order, so they had to pass on the order to carry it out. After many days, Zhu Yuanzhang remembered this matter, and when he asked, he realized that his subordinates had made a mistake. Hurry to call people to stop it, but it is too late, and many innocent people have become unjust souls!
Tashan, Changning City, Hunan Province
The third is blood washing and blue saying
In his later years, Zhu Yuanzhang was very jealous of meritorious men, especially military generals who could recruit good warriors. Therefore, he used various excuses to gradually eliminate the civilian generals. Among them, the fate of Hu Weiyong, the prime minister, and Lan Yu, the Duke of Liangguo, was the most tragic. In addition to his own extermination of the Nine Tribes, he also implicated other officials, resulting in the execution of more than 100,000 people in the Hu and Lan cases. This kind of scene has to be said to be quite miserable, so the people say that this is "blood washing, blue".
Fortuna Cave, Changning City, Hunan Province
Fourth, suppress the peasant rebels and ethnic minorities in various parts of Hunan, and the officers and soldiers indiscriminately kill innocents.
At that time, most of the indigenous people in Hunan Province were ethnic minorities, and at that time, they often rebelled against the imperial court, attacking the state capital and attacking the officials and troops. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty sent troops to suppress it, and the officers and troops who would be suppressed from all sides were killed regardless of good or bad, which led to a large decrease in the population of Hunan Province at that time!
The Xiang River flows through changning city in Hunan Province
Now back to the theme of this article, that is, when such a big thing happened, there are folk legends, genealogies have records, and official records are not recorded. However, why is it that in the whole of Hunan Province, only the official documents later compiled by Changning City, Hunan Province, record the historical facts of Zhu Yuanzhang's bloodbath in Hunan? This is mainly related to a Changning person born in the early years of the Ming Dynasty!
According to the Chronicle of Changning County, written during the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty Wei was in Hengzhou, and in Changning, his soldiers Xi Tuntian was in Changning, and after the massacre of Gaihunan, the Jiangxi Hukou was transferred to be installed, and when it was installed everywhere, only Changning and Guiyang were ambushed by the Fenghu Man in the twenty-eighth year, and they slaughtered half of the generals, so there was a gap in the thinking that Tun was tun, and it was the place where the Yu Yao people were, and there was no one in Heng County, and there was no one unique to Changning.
Tashan tea leaves in Changning City, Hunan Province
Feng Human, a native of Yangquan, Changning City, Hunan Province, is said to be a native of Qiyang. Han Chinese, also known as the Yao people. During the Hongwu period, he contacted the Yao people in the Shonan region to hold a great uprising, and for a time attacked the city and plundered the land, and Wei Zhen Sanxiang. The imperial court hurriedly dispatched troops from the surrounding prefectures and counties to suppress it, such as Yang Jing in Ningyuan County and Qianwei in Hengzhou. One of them, a man named Deng Liang, designed to booby-trap Feng Human and quell the uprising. However, as the county records say, more than half of the people in Changning were hunted and killed. Later, Deng Liang's descendants hereditary as Fuyao officials settled in Changning. In order to escape the pursuit, the people of Fenghuman changed their surname to Qin, and there are still many people surnamed Qin in Changning City. There is a place in Changning City called "Aotou Village", which was originally a place where the head of Fenghu was hung, which was called "Huotou Village" at that time, and later the locals changed their name to "Aotou Village" in order to commemorate Fenghuman!
Paradise Mountain, Changning City, Hunan Province
According to the records of Changning County, the local residents of Changning suffered two massacres around the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, first when they washed Hunan in blood, and then when the Fenghuman Uprising suffered again, which led to a large number of Jiangxi immigrants to Changning City, Hunan Province. Therefore, the accent and dialect of the current Changning people are obviously different from the population sounds of the surrounding Counties of Leiyang, Qiyang and Hengnan, and belong to the typical Gan-speaking area. After experiencing large-scale development in the Tang and Song dynasties, Changning City reached its peak during the Yuan Dynasty, because of its large population and economic prosperity, so it was upgraded to Changning Prefecture during the Yuan Dynasty, and later after the great catastrophe in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the population decreased on a large scale, and the total population of the county, including immigrants and officials and troops in Tuntian, was only a few thousand people! As a result, Changning Prefecture was demoted to Changning County.
Dongjiang Gorge, Changning City, Hunan Province