Ordos Loop
The people of Dai were not considered Chinese by the Zhou, but "White Di" ("Baidi"). The Di were reckoned as "Northern Barbarians" by the Chinese although they possessed towns and organized states on the Chinese model like Dai and Zhongshan. The White Di were first recorded living in land west of the Yellow River in what is now northern Shaanxi. They migrated east of the Ordos Loop into the valleys and mountains of northern Shanxi by the 6th centuryBC, creating states there which were defeated and annexed by the Zhou state of Jin and its successor Zhao. The Di continued eastward and founded Dai and Zhongshan in the northwestern corner of the North China Plain in what is now Hebei.