page_title: Monguor people
section_title: Current status
hierarchical_section_title: Monguor people / History / Current status
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Цайдамский монгол
context_page_description: The Monguor, the Tu people, the White Mongol or the Tsagaan Mongol, are one of the 56 officially recognized ethnic groups in China. The "Tu" ethnic category was created in the 1950s.
  According to the 2000 census, the total population was 241,198, who mostly lived in the Qinghai and the Gansu provinces. The 2010 census gave their number as 289,565. The Monguor people speak the Monguor language, which belongs to the family of Mongolic languages but has been heavily influenced by both the local Chinese and Tibetan dialects. Today, nearly all Tu people also speak Chinese. Most are farmers and some keep livestock.
  Their culture and the social organizations have been influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and local beliefs. A few Tu in Huzhu and Minhe are Christian, the result of on-going American and Korean missionary work in the area.
context_section_description: The Flemish Catholic missionary, Schram, who wrote about the Monguor based on residence in the current Qinghai Province in the early twentieth century, cited Comte de Lesdain, who characterized the Monguor as "the most authentic reminder of the primitive race from which the Chinese sprung." This characterization reflected that the Monguor culture under their observation has embodied "a high civilization fortified by its own history and distinctive social structure" developed by the Xianbei forefathers from their extensive rulings over China and preserved by the "Monguor"/"Tu". As early as the Tuyühu period, Confucianism served as the core ideology to govern the country, and the Chinese Buddhism and Shamanism functioned as the principle religions. In Western Xia, Confucianism was further strengthened, and Taoism was made into the national religion along with Buddhism. As the Yellow Sect of Buddhism, also known as the Tibetan Buddhism, became prevalent in the northwest, their religious lives shifted from the Chinese toward Tibetan Buddhism. After Western Xia fell, its territory centered in Ningxia was fragmented by the successive establishments of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai provinces, which increasingly weakened the political and military powers of the Monguor. Through the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties, the Monguor continued to play important roles in the national defense, and political and religious affairs of China. Starting in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the ranches of the Monguor were taken into the state possession, and their horses became the subject of being drafted into the national army and looted by the Mongols from the north, resulting in the eventual shift of their lifestyles toward sedentary agriculture, supplemented by minimum animal husbandry, as the original Monguor groups became settled into the form of different villages. In the last two centuries, the areas formerly occupied by the Monguor were encroached upon by increasing inland Chinese migrations. Throughout this period, the Monguor maintained a high degree of political autonomy and self governance under the local chiefdom system of Tusi. the Monguor troops led by their Tusi defended not only their own homeland but also joined the national army to participate in wars that took place as far as in eastern Liaoning, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Yunnan, Mongolia, and Dunhuang, which progressively weakened their military power. Their political power came to the ultimate decline when the Tusi system was abolished in 1931, which exacerbated more Monguor to lose their language. By the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, only about fifty thousand of the Monguor have maintained to speak their language, primarily in Qinghai and Gansu. During the Chinese classificatory campaigns carried out in the 1950s, those who could no longer speak their language were classified into "Han", those who could not speak their language but adopted the Islamic religion were classified into "Hui", those who followed the Mongols into the northern grassland were classified into "Mongols", and those who spoke their language and adopted the Islamic religion were classified into "Dongxiang", "Bonan" and "Yugur", the last of which represented the intermixture of the Xianbei and Sari Uyghurs.
caption: Mongour in 1901
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