Yuè

The Yuè culture occupies the Qiantang River basin and the southern shore of Hangzhou Bay around Hangzhou and Shaoxing in northern Zhejiang. It descends from the ancient State of Yue, whose capital Kuaiji stood at modern Shaoxing; under King Goujian, Yue annexed its rival Wu in 473 BC and dominated the lower Yangtze until Chu overran it in 333 BC.

The Yue were famed for bronze swords, a navy and a distinct native speech, often taken as the substrate of later Wu dialects. Under the Qin's Kuaiji Commandery, Han settlement and sinification deepened. In 1132 the Song court, driven south by the Jurchen, made Lin'an, modern Hangzhou, its capital; northern migrants gave the Hangzhou dialect its northern flavor and the region a literary reading layer.

Through the Yuan, Ming and Qing, Hangzhou remained the Grand Canal's southern terminus and a commercial city, while Shaoxing supplied examination graduates and the famed Shaoxing legal secretaries, and gave its name to Yue opera.