User:Rigley/meixian

Geography
Mei County is located on Guangdong's northeastern borders with Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. "Around 85% of the land consists of hills less than 500 meters above sea level". The three major rivers in Mei County are the Mei, the Ting, and the Han.

History
The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, created three prefectures in the former Nanyue, with modern-day Mei County belonging to Nanhai Prefecture. Catholicism penetrated Mei County in 1849, when a Malaysian Chinese convert brought the Paris Foreign Missions Society to the home county of his relatives. The steady conversion of families was only interrupted when the antiforeign Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) reached the area.

The name "Meixian" came into use during China's Republican period in the early 20th century. Until 1965, Mei County was part of Shantou Prefecture.

People's Liberation Army general Ye Jianying and son.

Transportation
In October 1987, the Meixian Airport began serving daily flights to the provincial capital of Guangzhou, which was previously 12 hours away by car. In 1995, the Guang-Mei-Shan railway was completed, connecting Meixian to Guangzhou and Shantou.

Culture
"Anyone from Meixian, the main city of northeast Guangdong Province, will tell you that its people are famous for their 'three abundances': soccer players, compatriots overseas, and the quality of their education." The local high school, Dongshan, is the only nationally-designated high school in Guangdong. Also, Meixian is home since 1985 to Jiaying University. China's best teams in women's international football competitions in the 1980s consisted of ethnic Koreans from Jilin who practiced against men in Meixian, known even then as the "homeland" of association football.

Economy
"In 1994 the population of Meixian was about 580,500, with farmers making up 86.99% of the total. During the reform period, the grain-only model was abandoned in favor of a diversified commercial economy. Fruit production has been the dominant form of agriculture since the mid-1980s...." "What industry it had was designed to support agriculture and to provide the beginnings of heavy industry to make use of its coal and other ores."

Hakka
The majority of Mei County's residents are Hakka people, and a majority of China's Hakka live in Meixian. Many Hakka consider Mei County especially, but also Mei County's surrounding seven counties in Meizhou prefecture, the center of Hakka culture. The Hakka language spoken here, as well as the genetic makeup of the residents, are said to be "purer" than in the surrounding areas of Jieyang, Lufeng, Haifeng, Fengshun, and Huilai, where the local "half-mountain Hakka" (半山客, bànshān kè) have acculturated with Fujian and Chaozhou people.

Emigration
One of the provisions of the 1860 Convention of Beijing with Britain, France, and Russia ended the Qing Dynasty's ban on emigration. The primary provinces to produce Overseas Chinese for the next hundred years would be Guangdong, Fujian, and Hainan. Within Guangdong, key sending areas to Nanyang were the "four counties" known as siyi, and the inland areas surrounding Shantou's port, including Meixian and Chaoshan. In the 1980s, over 1.8 million Overseas Chinese&mdash;twice the number of residents of the prefecture&mdash;traced their ancestry to Meixian. However, because of Meixian's inland location, and the fact that most emigrants became professionals rather than bankers or investors, Meixian did not become wealthy as a direct result.

Famous Overseas Chinese with ancestral homes in Mei County include Singaporean politicians Yang Yulin and Hou Yongchang.