History and geography
What this section holds
Three things: how the administrative map changed, how people came, and how the roads ran. Administrative history gives the time frame, migration gives the source of the population, trade routes and remittance letters give the link abroad. Only together do they explain why the customs here are what they are.
How to read the section
Historical geography is assembled from three blocks, and each rests on different evidence. They should not be told as one story.
1. Administrative history: official gazetteers
Every step — a prefecture created, a circuit renamed, a county carved out — has an official record and can be checked year by year. This block is the firmest, and leaves the least room for argument: wrong is simply wrong. Both of this site’s frames, “nine counties in the Qing” and “three cities today”, come from this layer.
2. Peoples and migration: genealogies, dialect, remittance letters
This block is the softest. Genealogies are shaped by the wish to trace ancestry far back; dialect evidence reaches only recent centuries; remittance letters reach only the modern period. Each source has its blind spot, so they must check one another: letters fix the modern facts, genealogies reach back into Ming and Qing origins, dialect tests whether the two connect.
3. Geography and settlement: gazetteer maps and the ground
How the Han River runs, how the coastline moved, how villages are laid out — the gazetteers have maps, and the ground can be checked. The value of this block is explanation: why this village took up that trade, why this lane is a boundary.
Administrative history: the key dates
Chaozhou was established as a prefecture in 591 (the eleventh year of Kaihuang, Sui), which is where the name begins. In 1279 (the sixteenth year of Zhiyuan, Yuan) it became a circuit. In 1369 (the second year of Hongwu, Ming) the circuit became a prefecture. The Qing kept the Ming arrangement. In 1733 (the eleventh year of Yongzheng) Chengxiang, Pingyuan and Zhenping were detached to form the Jiaying department, leaving the prefecture with eight counties; in 1738 (the third year of Qianlong) Fengshun was added, giving nine: Haiyang, Chaoyang, Jieyang, Raoping, Huilai, Chenghai, Puning, Dabu and Fengshun. In December 1991 the territory of Shantou was divided into the three cities of Shantou, Chaozhou and Jieyang.
This site takes as its ground the whole of today’s Chaozhou, Shantou and Jieyang — seven of those nine counties. Dabu and Fengshun are marked as within-prefecture comparison only. The administrative outline follows the “historical evolution” page of the Chaozhou municipal government portal, and each date can be checked back.
The full outline has its own page: Administrative history of Chaoshan, from the Sui prefecture to the three cities of 1991.
Peoples and migration
Three movements are at issue: Hoklo speakers coming down the coast into Chaoshan, Hakka speakers moving in gradually from the hills, and the “crossing the sea” to Southeast Asia that ran from Song and Yuan through the Qing. The third left the remittance letters — the “silver letters” that combined a message with a transfer — the most concrete evidence of the link between Chaoshan and the world overseas.
This material is easily flattened into a vague “southward migration of the gentry”. The rule here is to record by county, by period and by group, and to write nothing that no genealogy, gazetteer or surviving letter supports.
First topics in this section
- Administrative history: from the Sui prefecture of 591 to the three cities of 1991
- How “one prefecture, nine counties” came about: the changes of 1733 and 1738
- Crossing the sea and remittance letters: migration routes from Song to the Republic
- Hoklo and Hakka: how the population structure of Chaoshan formed
One rule
The three blocks cannot stand in for one another. Migration stories cannot explain administrative change, and an administrative outline cannot replace the history of a village. They only work when kept apart.
Last revised: 3 November 2026