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Where is Jiangnan?
The place name "Jiangnan" existed as early as the pre-Qin period, but its modern significance originated from the Tang Dynasty. Emperor Taizong divided the world into ten roads, including Jiangnan Road. Tang Xuanzong subdivided Jiangnan Road into Guizhou Middle Road, Jiangnan West Road and Jiangnan East Road, among which Jiangnan East Road includes Fujian, Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu and southern Anhui. Since then, the center of authentic Jiangnan has gradually stabilized in today's southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, until today.
From "Jiangdong" and "Jiangzuo" to "Jiangnan"
Among the various place names of the Ganges River, the most wonderful one should be "Jiangnan".
This place name existed as early as the pre-Qin period. But in the Sui Dynasty, the geographical scope it referred to was quite different from that later. At that time, it mainly refers to Hunan and Jiangxi in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.
Jiangnan in the modern sense originated from the Tang Dynasty. This place used to be called Jiangdong. In the story Farewell My Concubine, the heroic and affectionate Chu overlord Xiang Yu was defeated by the rogue emperor Liu Bang. He felt that he was "ashamed to see his elders in Jiangdong" and would rather commit suicide than flee to his hometown. That "Jiangdong" actually refers to the "Jiangnan" of later generations. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to the tradition of China, place names were named "Jiangzuo" by posthumous title, and were frequently used in public and private documents and various works and literary works.
From "Jiangdong" and "Jiangzuo" to "Jiangnan", it originated from the ten Taoist temples in Tang Dynasty. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the state and county two-level system was implemented. Because there are too many States, reaching more than 300, the central government is very troublesome to manage. It is said that Tang Taizong had to write the names of state officials on the screen because he could not remember them. Therefore, in the first year of Zhenguan (AD 627) at the beginning of his accession to the throne, he divided the world into ten monitoring areas, which he called "Tao". Among them, North Fifth Road and South Fifth Road. Jiangnan Road includes a large area south of the Yangtze River, north of Nanling, west to Guizhou and east to the sea. Because the number of divisions this time is too small, most of the southern districts are too vast. In the 21st year of Kaiyuan (AD 733), the number of roads increased to 15. Jiangnan Road is divided into Guizhou Middle Road, Jiangnan West Road and Jiangnan East Road from west to east, among which Jiangnan East Road includes Fujian, Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu and southern Anhui.
"Regional Discrimination" in Tang Dynasty
People in the Tang Dynasty had very interesting ideas about various regions. At that time, people emphasized the regional differences and always talked about the north and the south, but it was often "Saibei" and "Jiangnan" that were cited as comparisons. For example, "The flowers and willows in the south of the Yangtze River are your songs, and I only know the smoke and dust in Saibei" (Wang's trip).
We know that "Saibei" is a long and vast area extending from the east of Liaoshui to the west of Helan Mountain and Liupanshan Mountain. It always reminds people of harsh natural environment, such as cold, sandstorm, desert and cruel human environment, such as war and bones. Jiangnan, on the other hand, is not located at the southernmost tip of the south. It is pulled out because it is at the other extreme of environmental quality. Since the Southern Dynasties, it has always been a famous "land of beauty".
This contrast makes us have an interesting discovery, that is, in the north, the relationship between regions is roughly parallel, and no region can openly appear as a representative of the north. At that time, the prominent regional prejudice was the opposition between "Shandong" (east of Taihang Mountain) and Guanzhong, where people often made fun of each other and quarreled endlessly. Historically, Emperor Taizong once talked about how Shandong people are and how Guanzhong people are at banquets. There are many similarities and differences between his words. A minister named Zhang Xingcheng immediately knelt down and said, "I heard that the emperor is at home all over the world, so it should not be limited." Emperor Taizong suddenly woke up.
In the south, the gap between regions is obvious. Needless to say, because of the vast land, people in the Central Plains feel that they can only get half a life if they go there. The land of Bashu in the southwest, because of its seclusion in the southwest corner, is called "difficult to get around the road", which gives people a bad impression. This can be seen from Du Fu's famous sentence "Hanging in the northeast alone, drifting southwest between heaven and earth".
Is Yangzhou "Jiangnan"?
What really reminds people of the beauty of the south is "Jianghuai". However, this place name contains this meaning. That was in the late Tang dynasty, and now there are no manuscripts in Hunan and Fujian. In the past, many people took it for granted that "Jianghuai" refers to the area between the Yangtze River and Huaihe River, but it is not. In the concept of the Tang Dynasty, it is the abbreviation of the sum of "Jiangnan" and "Huainan". Huainan is the area between the Yangtze River and Huaihe River.
Huainan is a good place. At that time, he left a famous reputation: "I have money and ride a crane to Guangzhou." It's a pity that there is only one good place in Huainan, and the surrounding area is still not good. As mentioned above, in the Kaiyuan period (733), Jiangnan was divided into "Jiangnan West" and "Jiangnan East". In the late Tang Dynasty, "Jiangnan West" was simply called "Jiangxi". According to this logic, "Jiangnan East" should be abbreviated as "Jiangdong"-but it is not called "Jiangnan". Its dominant position can be imagined.
"Jiangnan" in the late Tang Dynasty has two meanings: broad sense and narrow sense. Broadly speaking, it refers to Jiangnan Road in Zhenguan No.10 Road. Since the Anshi Rebellion, the number of roads (square towns) has increased to dozens, and it has been transformed into a de facto high-level administrative region. At this time, the ten paths of Zhenguan are still widely used as a general regional concept. A document compiled regularly at the end of the Tang Dynasty, similar to the current atlas of administrative divisions, has detailed written descriptions and statistical data, and is called Shi Dao Lu or Shi Dao Lu.
But it is more commonly used in the narrow sense of "Jiangnan", that is, "Jiangnan East Road" in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. At this time, it has been under the jurisdiction of Xuanyi, East Zhejiang and West Zhejiang. Among them, Xuankui (now southern Anhui) is on the edge of Zhejiang, as evidenced by Zhang Jiuling's saying that "an old friend keeps Xuancheng, but also leaves Jiangnan". People in the Tang Dynasty were very sensitive to the differences in wuyue between eastern Zhejiang (now eastern and southern Zhejiang) and western Zhejiang (now northern Zhejiang). In people's minds at that time, Wu (Taihu Lake) was a typical land in the south of the Yangtze River.
Since the Tang Dynasty, although the edge of Jiangnan has been expanding and contracting, such as Yangzhou, which is located in the north of the Yangtze River, and is sometimes regarded as a part of Jiangnan, the authentic Jiangnan has been developing steadily centering on southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang.