Gan Chinese in the context of "Huizhou Chinese"

Chinese (spoken: simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ, written: 中文; Zhōngwén) is an umbrella term for Sinitic languages in the Sino-Tibetan language family, widely recognized as a group of language varieties, spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak one of the Chinese languages as their first language.

The Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The Chinese government considers the spoken varieties of the Chinese languages dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are considered to be separate languages in a family by linguists. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g., Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g., Shanghainese), and Yue (68 million, e.g., Cantonese). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with the other varieties within the same branch (e.g., Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin, Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan. All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic.

There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Jin, Hakka and Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese.

Chinese varieties have the greatest differences in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. All have phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. Many have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns in the coastal area from Zhejiang to eastern Guangdong.

The Hakka (Chinese: 客家), also referred to as Hakka Chinese or Hakka-speaking Chinese, are an ethnic group and subgroup of Han Chinese whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China and who speak a language that is closely related to Gan, a Chinese language spoken in Jiangxi province. They are differentiated from other southern Han Chinese by their dispersed nature and tendency to occupy marginal lands and remote hilly areas. The Chinese characters for Hakka (客家) literally mean "guest families".

The Hakka have settled throughout China and their presence is especially prominent in the landlocked border regions of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi.

Anhui is an inland province located in East China. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze and Huai rivers, bordering Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the east, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei and Henan to the west, and Shandong to the north. With a population of 61 million, Anhui is the 9th most populous province in China. It is the 22nd largest Chinese province based on area, and the 12th most densely populated region of all 34 Chinese provincial regions. Anhui's population is mostly composed of Han Chinese. Languages spoken within the province include Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Wu, Hui, Gan and small portion of Central Plains Mandarin.

The name "Anhui" derives from the names of two cities: Anqing and Huizhou (now Huangshan City). The abbreviation for Anhui is Wǎn (皖), corresponding to the historical Wan state [zh], and is also used to refer to the Wan River and Mount Tianzhu. The provincial government of Anhui includes a Governor, Provincial Congress, the People's Political Consultative Conference, and the Provincial Higher People's Court. Aside from managing local government departments, the Anhui provincial government manages 16 cities, 62 counties, 43 county-level districts and 1,522 townships. Anhui's total GDP ranked 14th among China's 31 province-level regions as of 2022.

New Xiang, also known as Chang-Yi (simplified Chinese: 长益片; traditional Chinese: 長益片; pinyin: Chǎng Yì piàn; lit. 'Changsha and Yiyang subgroup') is the dominant form of Xiang Chinese. It is spoken in northeastern areas of Hunan, China adjacent to areas where Southwestern Mandarin and Gan are spoken. Under their influence, it has lost some of the conservative phonological characteristics that distinguish Old Xiang. While most linguists follow Yuan Jiahua in describing New Xiang as a subgroup of Xiang Chinese, Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie classify it as Southwestern Mandarin. However, New Xiang is still very difficult for Mandarin speakers to understand, particularly the old style of New Xiang.

Lower Yangtze Mandarin (traditional Chinese: 下江官話; simplified Chinese: 下江官话; pinyin: Xiàjiāng Guānhuà) is one of the most divergent and least mutually-intelligible of the Mandarin language varieties, as it neighbours the Wu, Hui, and Gan groups of Sinitic languages. It is also known as Jiang–Huai Mandarin (traditional Chinese: 江淮官話; simplified Chinese: 江淮官话; pinyin: Jiānghuái Guānhuà), named after the Yangtze (Jiang) and Huai Rivers. Lower Yangtze is distinguished from most other Mandarin varieties by the retention of a final glottal stop in words that ended in a stop consonant in Middle Chinese.

During the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty, the lingua franca of administration was based on Lower Yangtze Mandarin. In the 19th century the base shifted to the Beijing dialect.

Hakka (Chinese: 客家话; pinyin: Kèjiāhuà; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Hak-kâ-va / Hak-kâ-fa, Chinese: 客家语; pinyin: Kèjiāyǔ; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Hak-kâ-ngî) forms a language group of varieties of Chinese, spoken natively by the Hakka people in parts of Southern China, Taiwan, some diaspora areas of Southeast Asia and in overseas Chinese communities around the world.

Due to its primary usage in isolated regions where communication is limited to the local area, Hakka has developed numerous varieties or dialects, spoken in different provinces, such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, as well as in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Yue, Wu, Min, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintelligible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan and is sometimes classified as a variety of Gan, with a few northern Hakka varieties even being partially mutually intelligible with southern Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features.

Xiang or Hsiang (Chinese: 湘; Changsha Xiang: [sian˧ y˦˩], Mandarin: [ɕi̯aŋ˥ y˨˩˦]), also known as Hunanese, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages, spoken mainly in Hunan province but also in northern Guangxi and parts of neighboring Guizhou, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces. Scholars divided Xiang into five subgroups: Lou–Shao (Old Xiang), Chang–Yi (New Xiang), Chen–Xu or Ji–Xu, Hengzhou, and Yong–Quan. Among those, Lou–Shao, or Old Xiang, still exhibits the three-way distinction of Middle Chinese obstruents, preserving the voiced stops, fricatives, and affricates. Xiang has also been heavily influenced by Mandarin, which adjoins three of the four sides of the Xiang-speaking territory, and Gan in Jiangxi Province, from where a large population immigrated to Hunan during the Ming dynasty.

Xiang-speaking Hunanese people have played an important role in Modern Chinese history, especially in those reformatory and revolutionary movements such as the Self-Strengthening Movement, Hundred Days' Reform, Xinhai Revolution and Chinese Communist Revolution. Some examples of Xiang speakers are Mao Zedong, Zuo Zongtang, Huang Xing and Ma Ying-jeou.

Three laughs at Tiger Brook (Chinese: 虎溪三笑; pinyin: hǔ xī sān xiào; Gan: fû ki sam siēu) is a Chinese proverb which refers to the image that the three men, Huiyuan, Tao Yuanming and Lu Xiujing laugh together when arriving at Huxi (虎溪, Tiger Brook) of Mount Lu. This concept represents the ideal harmonious relations of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism in ancient China.

Old Xiang, also known as Lou-Shao (simplified Chinese: 娄邵片; traditional Chinese: 婁邵片; pinyin: Lóu Shào piàn; lit. 'Loudi and Shaoshan subgroup'), is a conservative Xiang Chinese language. It is spoken in the central areas of Hunan where it has been to some extent isolated from the neighboring Chinese languages, Southwestern Mandarin and Gan languages, and it retains the voiced plosives of Middle Chinese, which are otherwise only preserved in Wu languages like Shanghainese. See Shuangfeng dialect for details. Mao Zedong was a speaker of Old Xiang with his native Shaoshan dialect.

Chang–Du or Chang–Jing, sometimes called Nanchang or Nanchangese (simplified Chinese: 南昌话; traditional Chinese: 南昌話; pinyin: Nánchānghuà) after its principal dialect, is one of the Gan Chinese languages. It is named after Nanchang and Duchang County, and is spoken in those areas as well as in Xinjian, Anyi, Yongxiu, De'an, Xingzi, Hukou, and bordering regions in Jiangxi and in Pingjiang County, Hunan.

Chengdu-Chongqing dialect or Cheng–Yu (Chinese: 成渝; pinyin: Chéng-Yú; Sichuanese Pinyin: Cenyu, locally [tsʰən˨˩y˨˩]) is the most widely used branch of Southwestern Mandarin, with about 90 million speakers. It is named after Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan, and Chongqing, which was under the administration of the province of Sichuan from 1954 to 1997. It is spoken mainly in northern and eastern Sichuan, the northeastern part of the Chengdu Plain, several cities or counties in southwestern Sichuan (Panzhihua, Dechang, Yanyuan, Huili and Ningnan), southern Shaanxi and western Hubei.

This uniform dialect is formed after the great migration movement in Ming and Qing dynasty, and is greatly influenced by the Chinese varieties of Mandarin the immigrants spoke from Hubei, Xiang and Gan. So it keeps fewer characteristics of Sichuan's original Ba-Shu Chinese than other Sichuanese dialects, such as Minjiang dialect.

The White Deer Grotto Academy (Chinese: 白鹿洞書院; pinyin: Báilùdòng Shūyuàn, Gan: Pak-Luk-Tung Su-yon, sometimes translated as White Deer Cave Academy or White Deer Hollow Academy) is a former school at the foot of Wulou Peak in Mount Lu, now in Jiujiang. It was one of the Four Great Academies of China, and today it is maintained as an important landmark.

Mount Lu or Lushan (simplified Chinese: 庐山; traditional Chinese: 廬山; pinyin: Lúshān, Gan: Lu-san) is a mountain situated in Jiujiang, China. It was also known as Kuanglu (匡廬) in ancient times. The mountain and its immediate area are officially designated as the Lushan National Park, and it is one of the most renowned mountains in the country. Mount Lu is located primarily in Lushan City within Jiujiang, although its northern portions are found in Jiujiang's Lianxi District. The oval-shaped mountains are about 25 kilometers (16 mi) long and 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) wide, and neighbors Jiujiang and the Yangtze River to the north, Nanchang to the south, and Poyang Lake to the east. Its highest point is Dahanyang Peak (大汉阳峰), reaching 1,474 meters (4,836 ft) above sea level. Dahayang Peak is also one of the hundreds of steep peaks that tower above the so-called sea of clouds that can encompass the mountain for almost 200 days each year.

Mount Lu is known for its grandeur, steepness, and beauty and is a prominent tourist attraction, especially during the summer months when the weather is cooler in the mountains than elsewhere. The mountain and the surrounding region is also one of the "spiritual centers" of China, containing many Buddhist and Daoist temples in addition to landmarks of Confucianism. Due to its striking beauty and sacred importance, Lushan National Park has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. The overlapping Lushan Quaternary Glaciation National Geopark is a member of the UNESCO Global Geoparks Network.