ABSTRACT
The province of Anhui is a rather artificial creation. Its boundaries make little sense in terms of the subgroups of Han who live in the region. The northern part of Anhui falls into the Northern Mandarin-speaking zone. In English-language books on China, the Wannan sublanguage has traditionally been called the Hweichow dialect, after the city of Huizhou on which it centers. Consequently, its more southern counties, those around Huizhou, can be described as southern Wan—in Chinese, Wannan. The Wannan people became prosperous as early as the Tang dynasty, when their area boomed as a major tea-producing region. The Wannan people have their own cuisine, and restaurants that serve it can occasionally be found elsewhere in China. The travels and wealth of the Huizhou merchants also gave the Wannan people something of a reputation as gourmets, knowledgeable about the foods of much of China. Southern Anhui is mountainous and somewhat isolated from logical transportation and communication routes.
