Jin (Chinese state)

Jin (Chinese: 晉), originally known as Tang (唐), was a major state during the middle part of the Zhou dynasty, based near the center of what was then China, on the lands attributed to the legendary Xia dynasty: the southern part of modern Shanxi. Although it grew in power during the Spring and Autumn period, its aristocratic structure saw it break apart when the duke lost power to his nobles. In 453 BCE, Jin was split into three successor states: Han, Zhao and Wei. The Partition of Jin marks the end of the Spring and Autumn Period and the beginning of the Warring States period.

Geography

Jin was located in the lower Fen River drainage basin on the Shanxi plateau. To the north were the Xirong and Beidi peoples. To the west were the Lüliang Mountains and then the Loess Plateau of northern Shaanxi. To the southwest the Fen River turns west to join the south-flowing part of the Yellow River which soon leads to the Guanzhong, an area of the Wei River Valley that was the heartland of the Western Zhou and later of the Qin. To the south are the Zhongtiao Mountains and then the east-west valley of the Yellow River which was the main route to the Wei Valley to the west. To the east were the Taihang Mountains and then the North China Plain. This location gave ambitious Jin dukes the opportunity to move north to conquer and absorb the Xirong tribes, move southwest and fight Qin, and move southeast to absorb the many smaller Zhou states.

Jin Chinese

Jin (simplified Chinese: 晋语; traditional Chinese: 晉語; pinyin: jìnyǔ), or Jinese, Jinhua or Jinyu, alternatively Shanxinese (Chinese: 山西话 Shānxī Huà), is a group of dialects of Chinese. Its exact status is disputed among linguists; some prefer to classify it under Mandarin, but others set it apart as an independent branch.

Jin is spoken over most of Shanxi province except for the lower Fen River valley, much of central Inner Mongolia and adjoining areas in Hebei, Henan, and Shaanxi provinces. Cities covered within this area include Taiyuan, Zhangjiakou, Hohhot, Jiaozuo, and Yulin. In total, Jin is spoken by roughly 45 million people.

Classification

Until the 1980s, Jin was universally considered to be a dialect of Mandarin Chinese. In 1985, however, Li Rong proposed that Jin should be considered a separate top-level grouping, similar to Cantonese or Wu Chinese (that is, its own dialect group). His main criterion was that Jin dialects had preserved the entering tone as a separate category, still marked with a glottal stop as in the Wu dialects, but distinct in this respect from the other Mandarin dialects.