Jiānghuái

The Jiānghuái culture lies between the Yangtze and the Huai rivers, from Nanjing and Zhenjiang to Gaoyou and the hills of eastern Hubei, and speaks Jianghuai or Lower Yangtze Mandarin, which keeps a glottal stop where most other Mandarin dialects lost the old entering tone. When the north fell in the fourth century, Central Plains refugees flooded into Jiankang, present-day Nanjing, and a second migrant wave during the Song wars formed the basis of the local speech.

Its fortune rose with the Ming: Zhu Yuanzhang took Jiqing in 1356 and renamed it Yingtian, then founded his dynasty at Nanjing in 1368, and the Jianghuai-based Nanjing koiné became the administrative Guanhua of the early Ming. Even after the Yongle Emperor moved the capital to Beijing in 1421, Nanjing pronunciation kept its prestige into the seventeenth century.

Under the Qing Nanjing became Jiangning prefecture in 1645, while Jianghuai and northern Mandarin together formed the written vernacular standard.