The Wu Chinese people, also known as Wuyue people (, Shanghainese: ), Jiang-Zhe people (江浙民系) or San Kiang (三江), 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 (in Hubei) 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 warfare during the upheaval of the Five Barbarians. In the 10th century, Wuyue (Ten Kingdoms) 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 (the most famous dialect of which is Shanghainese), 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

Culture

Education

Traditionally, in the past, Wuyue people dominated the imperial examinations and were often ranked first in the imperial examinations as Zhuangyuan (狀元), or in other positions of the Jinshi (進士) degree. The Wu speaking region produced 59 out of 114 Zhuangyuan scholars during the Ming and Qing dynasty, and 10427 out of 51444 Jinshi scholars, despite currently only constituting 6% of China's population. Amongst the 2331 scholars promoted to the Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Academy of Engineering since the institutions' establishment from 1955, over 30% are Wuyue people, with 450 are from Jiangsu, 375 are from Zhejiang, 84 are from Shanghai. In addition, 5 out of 12 Nobel laureates who are of Chinese descent are Wuyue people, including Tsung Dao Lee, Charles Kao, Steven Chu, Roger Tsien and Youyou Tu.

Languages

Music

Opera

Kunqu and Yue opera are amongst the most popular form of traditional opera in China, second to Peking Opera only.

Literature

Philosophy and Religion

Architecture Heritage Sites

Cultural Items

DNA Analysis

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 (1926–2024), Nobel prize laureate in Physics (1956). Tu Youyou (1930–), Nobel prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine (2015). Charles K. Kao (1933–), Nobel prize laureate in Physics (2009). Roger Y. Tsien (1952–2016), Nobel prize laureate in Chemistry (2009), Tsien was praised for being immensely intelligent by Herman Quirmbach who said "It's probably not an exaggeration to say he(Roger Y. Tsien)'s the smartest person I ever met... [a]nd I have met a lot of brilliant people".

Leaders and politicians

Businesspeople and entrepreneurs

Sportspeople

Mathematicians

Philosophers

Writers

Gao Xingjian (1940–), novelist, playwright, critic and the Nobel prize laureate for Literature of 2000.