Wu Chinese-speaking people


The Wu Chinese people, also known as Wuyue people, Jiang-Zhe people or San Kiang are a major subgroup of the Han Chinese. They are a Wu Chinese-speaking people who hail from southern Jiangsu province, the entirety of the city of Shanghai and all of Zhejiang province, as well as smaller populations in Xuancheng prefecture-level city in southern Anhui province, Shangrao, Guangfeng and Yushan counties of northeastern Jiangxi province, and some parts of Pucheng county in northern Fujian province.

History

Origins

For much of its history and prehistory, the Wuyue region has been home to several neolithic cultures such as the Hemudu culture, Majiabang culture, and the Liangzhu culture. Both Wu and Yue were two kingdoms during the Zhou dynasty, and many such allusions to those kingdoms were attributed in the Spring and Autumn Annals, the Zuo Zhuan, and the Guoyu. Later, after years of fighting and conflict, the two cultures of Wu and Yue became one culture through mutual contact and cultural diffusion. The Chu state from the west expanded into this area and defeated the Yue state.
After Chu was conquered by Qin, China was unified. It was not until the fall of Western Jin during the early 4th century AD that northern Chinese moved to Jiangnan in significant numbers. The Yellow River valley was becoming barren due to flooding, lack of trees after intensive logging to create farmland and constant harassment and invasion by the Wu Hu nomads.
In the 10th century, Wuyue was a small coastal kingdom founded by Qian Liu who made a lasting cultural impact on Jiangnan and its people to this day. The cultural distinctiveness that began developing over this period persists to this day as the Wuyue region speaks a branch of the Chinese language called Wu, has distinctive cuisine and other cultural traits.
There have been many periods of mass-migrations to Wuyue areas from Northern China, sometimes overtaking the local Wuyue population. One notable example of this was when the Song Dynasty fell in the north, large numbers of northern refugees flooded into the relocated capital Hangzhou mainly from the areas that are currently under the administration of modern-day Henan province. Within just 30 years, contemporary accounts record that these Northern immigrants outnumbered the Wu natives of Hangzhou, altering the city's spoken dialect and culture.

Subgroups

Education

Traditionally, in the past, Wuyue people dominated the Imperial examinations and were often ranked first in the imperial examinations as Zhuangyuan, or in other positions of the Jinshi degree.
During the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou produced the highest number of Zhuangyuan scholars.

Languages

The HLA-DRB1 distribution of Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai Han population does share genetic characteristics with other Han Chinese populations, but it also exhibits its own characteristics distinct from that of other Han Chinese populations. This study also suggests that Wu-speaking peoples genetically, bridge the gap between Northern Han and Southern Han populations and thus are an intermediate between both populations. Even though Wu-speaking peoples form a genetic cluster, DNA analyses also show that Wu-speaking peoples are genetically coherent with other Han Chinese populations.

Notable Wu Chinese speakers

Scientists and inventors

Tsung-Dao Lee, Nobel prize laureate in Physics.
Tu Youyou, Nobel prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine.
Charles K. Kao, Nobel prize laureate in Physics.
Roger Y. Tsien, Nobel prize laureate in Chemistry, Tsien was praised for being immensely intelligent by Herman Quirmbach who said “It’s probably not an exaggeration to say he’s the smartest person I ever met... nd I have met a lot of brilliant people".
Gao Xingjian, novelist, playwright, critic and the Nobel prize laureate for Literature of 2000.