Mǐn

Min is the most internally diverse branch of the Sinitic languages, centered on Fujian and taking its name from the Min River. Fujian was opened to Han settlement only in 110 BCE, when the armies of Emperor Wu destroyed the Minyue state.

Its rugged mountains screened the region from the northern migrations, so Min alone, with the extinct Shu, keeps distinctions of Old Chinese that the rhyme dictionary Qieyun of 601 no longer records, overlaid on a substrate left by the Minyue natives.

The Disaster of Yongjia in 311 brought refugees south. In 893 Wang Chao entered Fujian with an army, and his son Wang Shenzhi founded the Min Kingdom in 909. These waves stacked Han, Six Dynasties and Tang Chang'an layers on the old base, including a literary reading tradition written in Chinese characters.