In the early years of Qin Long, after 3,000 Yiwu soldiers arrived in Beijing with Qi Jiguang, it was a huge project to build the Great Wall, and the task of defending the border was also very arduous. In order to stabilize the morale of the army, the imperial court implemented the policy of "emigrating to secure the border", and allowed the families of foreign officers and soldiers to come with the army to defend the border during and after the construction of the Great Wall. As a result, many families have settled down in this foreign land, becoming descendants of the Great Wall from generation to generation, and also forming the "Yiwu Village" where descendants of Yiwu are relatively concentrated.
How many Yiwu villages are there at the foot of the Great Wall? How many Yiwu soldiers settled at the foot of the Great Wall? So far, there is no accurate statistics, and there is no record in history. According to the investigation of Qinhuangdao Cultural Bureau, along the 374.5 km long Ming Great Wall in Qinhuangdao, there are 158 natural villages descended from the Great Wall. According to the article "Militia" in Volume 4 of Qing Jiaqing's "Yiwu County Records", in the 22nd year of Wanli, Zhou Shiying, a magistrate of a county, said in his recitation that Yiwu soldiers had been scattered in the north and Fujian and Guangxi for many years. It can be seen that there were tens of thousands of Yiwu soldiers scattered in the north, Fujian, Guangdong and other places.
At the foot of the Great Wall, there is information about Yiwu Village, which first came from Suizhong County, Liaoning Province. At the end of last century, Cao of this county sent representatives to Yiwu to seek their roots and ancestors. According to legend, their ancestors Cao Zhongju and Cao Zhonggao were from Caocun, Yiwu. They followed Qi Jiguang to build the Great Wall and came to the north. After they settled here, they married Wang, Ye, Hu and Jin, descendants of Yiwu soldiers, and multiplied more than 654.38 million people. According to this clue, I went to Cao Cun to check the Cao Shi genealogy of Houyan, and found that Cao Shigao, the son of Cao Shixiao, was divided into three groups. Zhong Zi of other generations has descendants, while Zhong You has no descendants, indicating that he did not return to his hometown after moving out.
According to local records, in addition to Suizhong, Liaoning, there is Yiwu Village along the Great Wall in Funing, Hebei. Dongjiakou Village in Yingzhen is a village where descendants of Yiwu soldiers live together. So far, there are six families whose surnames are 123, including Chen, Sun, Geng, Wang and Luo. On a stone tablet of Dongjiakou Great Wall, the words "Luo Guan supervises the repair" are engraved. The 77-year-old man in the village said that he is a descendant of this Luoguan, and he can still recall the names of six generations of ancestors from memory. What he often says to his descendants is: "My ancestors were heroes who defended the Great Wall."
In addition, there are Naziyu, Banchangyu, Liangjiawan and Chengziyu villages, which are also the "descendant villages" of Yiwu soldiers along the Great Wall.