Wugang (simplified Chinese: 武冈; traditional Chinese: 武岡; pinyin: Wǔgāng) is a county-level city under the administration of Shaoyang, Hunan province, China.
The Wugang dialect belongs to Xiang Chinese language. The minority languages of Miao people and Yao people are also spoken.
Wugang is mostly populated by Xiang-speaking people which is a branch of Han-Chinese.
There are also Miao minority and Yao minority living in Wugang. One branch of the Wugang Yao people is known as "Tang" (擋).
Wugang has a population of approximately 730,000.
Hunan Province (Chinese: 湖南; pinyin: Húnán; Hunanese: Shuangfeng, [ɣəu˩˧læ̃˩˧]; Changsha, [fu˩˧lã˩˧]) is a province of the People's Republic of China. It is located in South Central China, south of the middle course of the Yangtze River, and south of Lake Dongting (hence the name Hunan, which means "south of the lake"). Hunan is sometimes called for short and officially abbreviated as "湘" (pinyin: Xiāng), after the Xiang River which runs through the province.
Hunan borders Hubei Province in the north, Jiangxi Province to the east, Guangdong Province to the southeast, Guangxi Province to the southwest, Guizhou Province to the west, and Chongqing to the northwest. The provincial capital is Changsha.
Hunan's primeval forests were first occupied by the ancestors of the modern Miao, Tujia, Dong and Yao peoples. It entered the written history of China around 350 BC, when under the kings of the Zhou Dynasty, it became part of the State of Chu. After Qin conquered the Chu heartland in 278 BC, the region came under the control of Qin, and then the Han dynasty. At this time, and for hundreds of years thereafter, it was a magnet for migration of Han Chinese from the north, who displaced or assimilated the indigenous people, cleared forests and began farming rice in the valleys and plains. The agricultural colonization of the lowlands was carried out in part by the Han state, which managed river dikes to protect farmland from floods. To this day many of the small villages in Hunan are named after the Han families who settled there. Migration from the north was especially prevalent during the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties Periods, when nomadic invaders pushed these peoples south.