Why do we say Jiangxi Laobiao? What does it mean?

Laobiao is the name Jiangxi people call fellows from the same province, with a certain degree of intimacy. Jiangxi laobiao is also a more affectionate name for Jiangxi people from other provinces. There are two theories about the origin of "Jiangxi Laobiao": one is that Hunan people believe that their ancestors are cousins ??with Jiangxi people, so they call Jiangxi people "Jiangxi Laobiao"; the other is that the ancestors of Gansu believe in Feng Shui, in order to People in Jiangxi often carry a watch (compass) to help them grasp the direction during migration, so people in Jiangxi are called "Laobiao".

In addition, some immigrants from Jiangxi to other provinces from the Ming and Qing Dynasties to modern times also maintained the title of "Laobiao", such as Hunan, northern Fujian, southwestern Anhui and other places.

Extended information

The origin of Jiangxi Laobiao:

1. The title among Hakka people.

It originated from the Hakka area in southern Jiangxi. The Cantonese people who moved from eastern Guangdong called the locals "Lao Biao" (because people in both places are Hakka). Later, it spread to the whole of Jiangxi and became "Old Biao". Another name.

2. After Zhu Yuanzhang was saved, he was called his old cousin.

According to legend, Zhu Yuanzhang was rescued from an accident in Jiangxi when he was not emperor. In order to repay the kindness of the people of Jiangxi, he promised that if he conquered the world, the people of Jiangxi could come to him directly in the name of his old cousin if anything happened to him.

3. Religious totem belief.

It can be traced back to the totem era. "Biao" often refers to wood in the old days, such as "Xuan Gong Twelve Years": "Tomorrow, to express it, all will be found under the wood." Du's note: "Biao refers to wood."

The excavation of the Wucheng site in Qingjiang revealed that the Shang Dynasty red clay altar was "distributed with hundreds of pillar holes of different sizes, mostly arranged in rows or staggered." This is obviously the original worship of the Dongyi ethnic group in the Jianghuai River Basin and the Jiangnan extension area. Fetishistic totem pole beliefs.

There were written records of "Lao Biao" from the mid-Shang Dynasty to the end of the Warring States Period. So there is a saying that "Laobiao" is originally a folk saying for totem poles, and it is the memory residue of the totem image among Jiangxi ethnic groups.

4. Women become relatives to each other after marrying outside.

There were many villages in Jiangxi named after their surnames, such as "Wangjiacun, Lijiacun, Zhangjiabao, etc." Most of the men in the village belonged to one clan with the same surname, and there were ancestral halls for kinships built in the villages. It is a custom for women not to marry far away, which leads to more distant cousins ??in neighboring villages. Outsiders jokingly call them "Jiangxi old cousins".

5. Immigrants affected by war become close to each other.

At the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, many areas in eastern Hunan were deserted due to war, and a large number of people from Jiangxi moved into Hunan. Later, during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, a large number of people from Jiangxi moved in, and in some places, eighty-nine out of ten households came from Jiangxi.

When these descendants of Jiangxi people who moved to Hunan returned to Jiangxi to pay homage to their ancestors, they liked to call the local Jiangxi people "old cousin", which means cousin. This is the legend related to filling Huguang in Jiangxi Province, and it is also the most popular theory about the origin of the word Laobiao.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Jiangxi Laobiao