Ming Migrations

Because the Mongols they had just overthrown still retained a significant presence in Yunnan, the new Ming Emperor campaigned in the province to clear it of Mongols. Yet he wasn't about to leave it now that it had been incorporated into the Chinese Empire. The Ming court decided to develop Yunnan and Sinicise the province once and for all. The province was once again reorganised, in the remote areas tusis established after the Mongol tradition, the Han areas administered directly.

Above all the Ming rulers encouraged immigration. especially from the over-populated provinces on the Yangzi. Besides the pioneers who headed for the vacant farmland,many took up occupations in the growing towns. The larger and more important urban centres erected walls and gates on the Ming model of northern China. Ming rulers also lavished patronage on Daoist and Buddhist monuments and monasteries, partly motivated by a desire to fix up its new province with a permanent Chinese cultural identity.

Immigration from the Yangi River areas proceeded in waves, each time from a different place. And each group chose a different place to settle, bringing with them their own peculiar customs or dialects from their former residences. In the early 15th century, for example, a large contingent from Nanjing settled on the plain of Yongsheng County, Lijiang Prefecture. Virtually no one else settled there and Nanjing migrants in later centuries went to Baoshan and other places. But Yongsheng residents even today still speak a 15th century version of the Nanjing dialect of Chinese. Tourists from modern Nanjing can recognise this. It's equivalent to happening upon a town in England where the people speak English in the Elizabethan style.

Kunming, on the other hand, has a very northern element both in its dialect, which is close to Mandarin, and its people. This was the place where the Ming court dispatched its political exiles and troublesome intellectuals. The Qing govemment did the same.