She

The She, who call themselves Shanke, or mountain guests, are an indigenous people of the south-eastern hills, concentrated in Fujian and Zhejiang. Their traditions point to Phoenix Mountain in Chaozhou as their birthplace. Northern migrants from the Qin dynasty onward pushed them from the Guangdong coast into the mountains, where they farmed by slash-and-burn and boiled salt from coastal pools.

By the Tang dynasty of 618–907 they held the border country of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi and rose in risings that passed into Fujianese fiction. The name She-min, meaning the slash-and-burn people, first appears in late Southern Song records of the thirteenth century, when She salt producers on Lantau Island sailed against Canton in revolt.

During the Ming and Qing after 1368 they moved from northern Fujian into the mountains of southern Zhejiang and the lower Yangtze, pressed by Hakka settlers.