Táizhōu

The Táizhōu culture fills the coastal belt between Mount Tiantai and the East China Sea, around the prefectural city of Linhai. A county was first set up at Huipu under the Han in 85 BC; after the Eastern Jin split the Linhai commandery, the Tang founded Taizhou in 622, naming it after Mount Tiantai; the Yuan made it Taizhou Route in 1277.

Its speech forms the Taizhou division of Southern Wu, the variety closest to Northern Wu, only partly intelligible with Shanghainese and not with Mandarin.

In 1348 the Huangyan man Fang Guozhen raised a pirate fleet, seized Taizhou, Wenzhou and Ningbo and built a navy of more than a thousand ships that held the grain sea-lanes to the northern capital until he surrendered to Zhu Yuanzhang in 1367, on the eve of the Ming. Under the Ming the region became Taizhou Prefecture, and sheltered harbors kept its people to fishing, shipbuilding and coastal trade through the Ming and Qing.