Mincang

Mincang, officially the Mincang Confederation (: 岷昶聯盟; Min2cang3 Nian2min2) is a, federal constitutional republic spanning the heart of Sinju. It borders Fukoet, Hokan, and Gaoxiong to the north, Meisaan and Sansiao to the northeast, Zhuigo and Tangbeh to the east, and Hhokai, Sitoan, Lanxieu, and Fuinam to the south.

Mincang is known for its distinct, spicy cuisine, its hot climate, and its turbulent history.

Prehistory
Artifacts recovered from archeological sites in XXX indicate that early hominins had arrived in Mincang by about 200,000 years ago. Homo sapiens is believed to have arrived around 40,000 years ago, approximately 4,000 years before reaching Fusen and Jeongmi.

Mincang's first known civilization was the XX culture, dating to the 15th century BCE.

Ancient Mincang
By the 10th century BCE, Mincang was composed of an assortment of rival plains, mountain tribes, and other local powers. The two largest native states of this time period were XX, stretching from XX to XX, and XX, including XX and XX. Bronze, jade, and stone artifacts from this era indicate the development of a technologically and culturally advanced society for the time period.

Several wars broke out in the 840s, weakening the two major plains powers of XX and XX. This allowed for the rise of the trading center of Je (齊), a wealthy but previously minor city-state in the foothills of the northeastern XX mountains. Leading a successful invasive force against XX, Je proclaimed itself as Daeje (大齊, "great Je"), a loosely united empire.

Writing
The first confirmed use of was in northern Mincang in the 1200s BCE. They quickly became the predominant mode of writing across Mincang, and by the 6th century, carried by the rise of Je, they had spread to Meisaan and elsewhere in Sinju.

Classical Mincang
By 710 BCE, Cheonje, as Je came to be known, had reformed into a centralized, bureaucratic, and militarized empire under the leadership of Emperor XX. Danyang, Cheonje’s capital, was located in the northeastern part of Mincang, and in the first few centuries CE it became the cultural, commercial, and administrative hub of much of Sinju. During that time, Mincang also became a major salt production center, with the empire building up advanced infrastructure to drill into the subterranean salt pools extant in the area. Salt production would come to define the Mincangan economy for centuries.

Cheonje also built massive irrigation systems on the XX and XX rivers, increasing Mincang's agricultural output.

Early Mincang
After the Raze of Danyang and the fall of Cheonje, Mincang was splintered into several smaller states. While Meisaan, Jeongmi, and other nearby territories united in the 900s, Mincang remained divided until 1103, when it was briefly united until 1176 under the kingdom of XX. Despite this division, substantial cultural development nonetheless took place, especially in the realms of art and literature. Poetry flourished during this period, and major works such as the XXX and the XXX were published.

Beginning in the 1190s, a first wave of Hakka migration occurred, originating from the north and settling in the southwestern coastal region (today’s Fuinam).

Hundred Years of Instability
The region was entirely united again the 1300s, following a brief invasion from the recently-formed Jeongmian-Meisaani Union in 1294. The great famine of 1465 caused widespread rebellion, which set off the so-called ‘hundred years of instability’, lasting until the 1560s. During this period, factional warfare was nearly constant and several internal mass migrations took place. A second Hakka wave also entered the region, this time settling along the coast in general and especially in the northwest (modern Fukoet).

First Mincang State
Mincang was united again into a single state from 1569 to 1703, under the control of the XXX clan. This period saw one of the strongest central governments since Cheonje, with a reinvigorated bureaucratic system and a single dominant standing army. However, the XXX government was unable to retake several regions historically considered part of Mincang — Sansiao (which had come under Meisaani control), Zhuigo, and other ethnic-minority-inhabited mountainous regions. XXX attempted large-scale land reform in the 1614, declaring all land in Mincang property of the central government. However, within fifteen years, the XXX government had de facto returned ownership to private holders.

Over the last sixty years of its existence, a series of inept leaders beginning with the teenage XXX, combined with the economic drain imposed by still-constant war against the dis-unified outer regions, caused the central Mincangan state to slowly lose much of its power to local authorities and the merchant societies to whom it delegated salt production.

Societies period and Industrialization
After the XXX government underwent a coup d’état and was dissolved in the early 1700s, Mincang was once again governed by a multitude of small powers. Rule during this period was traditionally carried out by one or more of the sihui (四會), or four kinds of societies: familial, lineage-based clan associations or monarchical city-states; ethnic-based associations or states (mostly in the east and southwest); military-based warlord dominions; and often democratic merchant guild-based gongsis (公司). These societies often overlapped, with some controlling both physical territory and the allegiance of the people resident there and others controlling just one or the other. Each society levied separate taxes, organized separate militaries, and instituted separate laws, and typically had a conception of which community — whether defined by territory, ethnic identity, or occupation — they were responsible for. By population, the XXX and the XXX were two of the largest and therefore most powerful societies for much of the late 1700s. Intra-society relations were governed largely by ‘alignment politics’, in which constantly shifting alliances and cliques prevented any one society from taking greater control.

Several merchant-based societies, controlling territory mostly in the Mincangan north and littoral, developed strong ties to Jeongmi and Meisaan through heavy trade relations. Some served nearly as puppet states for those nations’ economic and cultural interests. Through these connections, Mincang slowly progressed through a trickle-down industrial revolution, which shifted some power away from rural, agricultural ethnic-based societies and to the trade-based ones in industrial centers.

Confederated Mincang
In 1843, a large coalition of salt-producing societies met to create the Salt Pact, a loose treaty organizing anti-piracy action, better universal regulation of prices, and infrastructure development. The Pact is widely seen as the beginning of a Mincangan national movement. Its members coalesced around an economic stance in opposition to the territories perceived as tied more closely to foreign interests, which depended on Jeongmi’s support for their development. In 1858, a mass quasi-religious peasant revolt known as the Crimson Turbans, which had originated in rural areas, spread those territories, upsetting the traditional balance of power. In order to prevent its spread into the rest of Mincang, over seventy societies — including the Salt Pact — quickly unified into the Mincang Confederation of Societies (會社聯盟). The Confederation was able to defeat the Crimson Turbans with an organized military coalition, but the political Council of Societies it established persisted. The Confederation government gradually strengthened through the 1870s, carrying out military reforms to modernize and make uniform the now centrally-controlled military. During this time, natural gas also became a significant portion of the Mincangan economy.

In 1895, Mincang re-instituted a national civil service examination for the first time in nearly two hundred years. Although the system established was only a fraction of the size and importance of earlier civil service selection processes, this action nonetheless was received by the rest of Sinju as a sign of increased desire for national unity.

However, Mincang’s political structure was still substantially devolved, following a model labeled and  by many historians. Society leaders consorted through the Confederation to stave off inter-group conflict and return any benefits they could to their communities, but most people remained loyal to their individual society. Mincang was also still not completely united, with some small merchant societies remaining Jeongmian or Meisaani tributaries. A series of successes in several minor skirmishes with a militarizing Meisaan in the 1890s and 1900s contributed to an increase in nationalist sentiment, while the persistence of several non-Confederation tributaries continued to provoke anti-foreign anger as well.

Cheonjism and the Great Eulhae War
The 1920s saw the rise of a new ideology: irredentist Cheonjism. Recalling Mincang’s history as the origin of the Cheonje empire, it called for a new Cheonje uniting all of Sinju under the control of Mincang. A crippling depression in 1925 led many Mincangans to look towards a stronger national government for solutions; a coup in 1927 by high-level officers from within the unified military, primarily from the southern Hong clique, provided the answers. The new junta government rapidly increased militarization and promoted, among other nationalist policies, anti-Hakkaism — many Hakka were coastal merchants and were therefore labeled as loyal to the meddling Jeongmi.

In 1931, Mincang invaded XXX, intending to hold it as a colony, and renamed itself the "Mincang Empire". The Mincang-XXX War lasted nearly three years and cost over 16,000 Mincangan casulaties, as well as condemnation from the international community.

In 1935, Mincang signed the Chukyo Pact with Nukigurun, Fusen, Gaoxiong, and Hachuabsh, entering the Great Eulhae War and attacking Meisaan in 1936.

Contemporary Mincang
After the Eulhae War, Mincang was greatly demilitarized and democratized. XXX was immediately relinquished, and Fukoet and Fuinam were carved out of its northwest and southwest as sovereign Hakka states in December 1942.

Today, Mincang is a corporatist, progressive democracy. As a result of its sihui tradition, social welfare and primary education are still pillarized, with little national welfare system. Machine politics, drawn on the lines of the old societies, is rampant, though its influence is steadily decreasing.

Geography
At XX square kilometers, Mincang is the Xth largest country in the world and one of the largest in Sinju. Its borders extend from the mountainous backbone of Jungju in the east to a small coastline on the XX sea in the west. To the north, minor hills and ridges divide it from Hokan and Gaoxiong; to the south, they divide it from and Lanxieu and Fuinam. It shares XX Lake, the second-largest in Jungju by area after Lake Yong, with both nations. Mincang also includes the small island group of XX.

Mincang encompasses a wide variety of terrain. Its center is mostly made up of the broadly flat, parallel XX and XX river plains, forming the fertile, elongated Mincang basin. All of Mincang's major urban centers, including Zuisen, are located in the basin. Mincang's eastern third consists of several interlocking mountain ranges, rising to the XX plateau in the southeast. To the extreme west, the XX ridges, which also surround Mincang to its south, make its coastline rough and fragmented. In total, over 40% of Mincang's territory is mountainous. Its highest point is XX mountain in the XX range on the border with Tangbeh, at an elevation of 7,301 meters.

Biodiversity
s are native to of Mincang's bamboo forests and low mountains. The vast majority of all giant pandas in the wild live in Mincang, and many are protected in the XX, XX, and XX national parks. Due to their endemic nature, they have become an unofficial national symbol of Mincang, and draw large numbers of tourists to the Mincang southeast.

Mincang's mountains are famous for two types of plants: forests at lower elevations and  at higher elevations. Travelling to the mountains to observe larches in the autumn, when they turn bright yellow, is a popular pastime.

Climate
Mincang's climate can generally be divided into two distinct zones. The Mincang basin experiences a (Cwa or Cfa), with long, hot, wet summers and short, mild to cool, dry and cloudy winters. As elevation increases in the southeast, temperatures grow cooler and cloudiness decreases. The highest mountainous areas and the XX plateau experience an alpine,  (Dfc or Dwc).

Government
Although Mincang is officially known as the Mincang, that is merely a ceremonial designation in recognition of the state's history as a "confederation of societies". In fact, Mincang today is a constitutional, with features of both a and a. It is also often described as a unitary state.

Administrative divisions
Mincang is composed of XX provinces under the direct control of the national government, as well as X autonomous provinces with their own assemblies, executives, budgets, resources, and police forces. This setup makes it one of the most countries in Sinju.

Religion
During the gradual collapse of Cheonje, Buddhism became very popular in the country.

Cuisine
Mincang cuisine is notable for being very spicy, and has achieved a great deal of popularity internationally. It possesses bold flavors and incorporates heavy usage of chili peppers, garlic, and the, which gives spicy Mincangan food a unique tongue-numbing flavor.