Sichuanese people

Sichuanese people
巴蜀人 巴蜀民系

A local Sichuanese worker, carrying timbers for walkways at UNESCO World cultural heritage site at Huanglong, Sichuan, China.
Regions with significant populations
Peoples' Republic of China	Sichuan Chongqing
Republic of China (on Taiwan)	As part of Mainlander population
Languages
Historically Ba-Shu Chinese, also known as Old Sichuanese. Presently Sichuanese dialects of Southwestern Mandarin.
Religion
Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese folk religion
Related ethnic groups
other Han Chinese

Sichuanese, Sze Chuan or Si Ch'uan (previous romanize spelling) people (Sichuanese: 巴蜀人 Ba¹su²ren²; IPA: [pa⁵⁵su²¹zən²¹]; alternatively 川人, 川渝人, 四川人 or 巴蜀民系) are a subgroup of Han Chinese living in mostly Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality of China.

Beginning from the 9th century BC, Shu (on the Chengdu Plain) and Ba (which had its first capital at Enshi City in Hubei and controlled part of the Han Valley) emerged as cultural and administrative centers where two rival kingdoms were established. Although eventually the Qin dynasty destroyed the kingdoms of Shu and Ba, the Qin government accelerated the technological and agricultural advancements of Sichuan making it comparable to that of the Yellow River Valley. The now-extinct Ba-Shu language was derived from Qin-era settlers and represents the earliest documented division from what is now called Middle Chinese.

During the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the population of Sichuan where Chengdu-Chongqing dialect is now spoken at was reduced through wars and the bubonic plague and settlers arrived from the area of modern Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong and Jiangxi, replacing the earlier spoken Chinese dialect with a new standard.