Why is Wuzhou called Wuzhou?

Wuzhou is located in the east of Guangxi and the middle reaches of the Pearl River Basin. Wuzhou is an ancient city with a history of more than 2000 years. In ancient times, it was a place where hundreds of people struggled, and Guangxin and Cangwu were ancient names. Legend has it that it was named after a large number of buttonwood trees in ancient times. In 62 1 year (4th year of Tang Wude), the county was changed to state, and Cangwu was changed to Wuzhou, which was the beginning of the name of Wuzhou. Wuzhou was formally established 1927, a provincial city. Wuzhou now governs Wanxiu District, Dieshan District, Suburb, Cangwu County, tengxian and mengshan county, and Cenxi City, with an area of12,585 square kilometers and a population of 2.73 million, with the Han nationality accounting for more than 99% of the total population. Among them, Wuzhou has an area of 307 square kilometers and a population of 320,000. Wuzhou is located at the intersection of Jiang Xun and Gui Jiang (the upper reaches of which are called Lijiang River), backed by Baiyun Mountain at an altitude of 365 meters, and surrounded by green hills.

According to textual research of ancient books. Before the Qin Dynasty, Wuzhou was a land of Baiyue, and ancestors should be able to speak Baiyue. Judging from the signs that there are many Zhuang language factors in Wuzhou dialect today, the Baiyue language originally spoken by Wuzhou ancestors may be the ancient Zhuang language.

In 2 18 BC, Ou Guo (now Wuzhou, Yulin and Beihai), a branch of the ancient Yue people, rose up against Qin in Cangwu, and Qin Shihuang sent Tusui to lead 500,000 troops to conquer it. Tu Sui ordered Shilu to dig a canal in Haiyang Mountain to connect Xiangjiang River and Lijiang River. The army went down the Lijiang River and Hejiang River and was invincible. Four years later, the war came to an end, and Qin Shihuang "detained 500,000 immigrants". These 500 thousand people are mainly distributed in the middle reaches of Xijiang River with Wuzhou as the center. At that time, the counties in Lingnan were sparsely populated. Until the Eastern Han Dynasty, the population of counties rarely exceeded 654.38+ 10,000. The arrival of a large number of Han people is enough to change the situation that Vietnamese people "unify the world", thus bringing Han people from the Central Plains into Lingnan.

In the sixth year of Ding Yuan in the Han Dynasty (1 1 1), Nanyue was destroyed by the Han Dynasty, and Lingnan was divided into Cangwu, Nanhai, Yulin, Hepu, Jiaodi, Jiuzhen, Rinan, Boer and Zhuyajiu counties. At the same time, it established the history of cross-toe, ruling these nine counties. In the fifth year of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (BC 106), the "cross-toe secretariat" was moved from Yinglou (now northwest of Hanoi, Vietnam) to Guangxin County (now Wuzhou City) in Cangwu County. The jurisdiction of Cangwu County is equivalent to Du Pangling in Guangxi, Shandong, Zhaoqing and Luoding in Dayao in Guangdong, Jiangyong and Jianghua in Hunan, tengxian in Guangxi and Xinyi in Guangdong. Since then, Guangxin has been the political, economic and cultural center of Lingnan for 3 16 years (2 1 1 year). In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Toe Toe Secretariat was changed to Jiaozhou, and the office was still in Guangxin.

During the long period from the Qin Dynasty to the Eastern Han Dynasty, Han immigrants brought the culture and language of the Central Plains to Guangxin to take root, blossom and bear fruit. The 4,500-kilometer post road from Luoyang to Guangxin has brought vigorous cultural vitality to Guangxin. Because Guangxin is remote, information about the unrest in the north often comes, but it is still peaceful here. During the Han Dynasty, in order to seek refuge and revenge, a large number of Central Plains people fled to Lingnan area, and some aristocratic families came to Guangxin. Many Chu Shi, celebrities and scholars also came to Wuzhou with many disciples. They run public and private schools, write books and make their cultural activities flourish.

At that time, several scholars who could represent Lingnan's academic thoughts were Guangxin, such as Shi Xie (a native of Jingnan, Cangwu) in Notes on Spring and Autumn Classics, Notes on Rams and Notes on Gu Liang. The famous Confucian scholar who wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals and Wang Mang's teacher Chen are also called "Lingnan Confucianism", and Chen Yuan, who wrote the similarities and differences of Zuo's family background. Father and son are the ancestors of Lingnan Confucian classics. Mou Zi, a Buddhist at the end of Han Dynasty, wrote China's first Buddhist monograph, The Theory of Reason and Confusion. Language is the carrier of culture. With the spread of China culture, Chinese is also popular in Guangxin area.

In Guguangxin, with the further integration of Han Chinese and Baiyue people, Zhongyuan Chinese constantly absorbed and accepted some Baiyue indigenous languages, including Zhuang language, and gradually formed early Cantonese. In the 200 years after the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Central Plains was ruled by nomadic people in the north for nearly 300 years, and the Chinese language has also undergone great changes under the influence of these minority languages (today's Mandarin is greatly influenced by Xianbei language). In contrast, Lingnan people who were less affected by the war, especially Guangxin people, retained the characteristics of the Han people in the Central Plains during the Wei and Jin Dynasties.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cao Cao appointed Du Dong (Lingnan), the seventh county of Shixie, in the name of the Eastern Han court, to compete with Wu Ju, the satrap of Cangwu appointed by Liu Biao. After Battle of Red Cliffs, Sun Quan took advantage of the situation and sent Buzhi to lead the army south to defeat Wu Ju and seize Guangxin. Shi Xie was forced to declare his submission to Soochow. Buzhi marched eastward along the Xijiang River and captured Panyu (now Guangzhou). In order to avoid the influence of the Stone Association and consolidate the rear of Sun Wu's regime, Oracle inscriptions moved the state administration of Jiaozhou from Guangxin to Panyu in the 16th year of Jian 'an (2 1 1). Since then, Guangxin's 300-year history as the capital of Lingnan has come to an end. In order to facilitate governance, in the seventh year of Yong 'an (264), Wu Dong divided Lingnan into Guangzhou and Jiaozhou. Guangzhou governs Nanhai, Cangwu, Yulin, Hepu and Panyu. Jiaozhou governs Jiaotoe, Old Town, Rinan, Bor and Zhu Ya, and the state governs Longbian (now Hanoi, Vietnam).

After Panyu became Guangzhou, the influence of Han people expanded along the middle reaches of Xijiang River to the lower reaches and the Pearl River Delta. The culture and language of the Han nationality gradually spread eastward from Guangxin, and Cantonese gradually became the lingua franca from Xijiang River Basin to Pearl River Delta. After Cantonese formed its own characteristics and spread to a certain extent, it stopped accepting the further assimilation of northern Chinese and even resisted this assimilation. However, Central Plains Chinese is influenced by the languages of northern nomadic people, which is far from the Cantonese reserved in Central Plains Chinese before Sui and Tang Dynasties.

Guangzhou dialect was relatively stable when it spread from Guangxin to the East, and it has stopped accepting the further assimilation of Chinese in the Central Plains, especially in its attitude towards Hakka dialect. Hakkas entered Lingnan from the Central Plains, and reached a climax when they crossed south with Song Gaozong in the late Tang Dynasty. At that time, the original Han immigrants in Lingnan were very powerful and controlled the economically developed areas such as the Pearl River Delta and the plains on both sides of the Xijiang River. Therefore, the newly moved Hakkas can only settle in Lingnan Mountain area. Originally, Hakka dialect was regarded as a relatively standard Chinese in the Central Plains at that time, but it was unable to assimilate Cantonese, which had formed its own characteristics, after it was introduced into Lingnan. On the contrary, according to the principle of "poor learning and rich learning" in cultural exchange, Hakka dialect in some areas has been infiltrated by Cantonese, becoming a "cross-strait language" and even becoming a Cantonese area.

When Cantonese spread eastward from Guguangxin along the Xijiang River, it also went upstream. Up to now, it has spread to Guiping, Guigang, Nanning and other places, from tengxian to Beiliu via Beiliu River, and to Yulin, Qinlian and Zhanjiang via the Gate of Hell. From now on, it can be proved that language communication is related to rivers and regional culture is water culture.

Cantonese dialect is divided into three levels: the first level is Guangzhou dialect, which is the most popular main dialect in Cantonese system, based on the dialects of cities and counties on both sides of the Pearl River Delta and Xijiang River, including Wuzhou, Hong Kong and Macao. The second level is the peripheral or remote areas belonging to the Pearl River or Xijiang River basin, including Dongguan, Zengcheng, Conghua, Qingyuan, Yunfu, Luoding, Jiaozhou and Huazhou, as well as Cenxi, Yulin and Nanning. Compared with Guangzhou dialect, the dialects in these places have their own characteristics, but there are still many similarities in pronunciation and vocabulary. The third level is non-Pearl River or Xijiang Cantonese films, including Yangshan and Lianxian in western Guangdong, Xinhui, Taishan and Yangjiang in central Guangdong, and Hepu and Lingshan in Guangxi. This non-Xijiang Cantonese is very different from Guangzhou in pronunciation and vocabulary.