Zhuang people
The Zhuang (; ; ) are a Tai-speaking ethnic group who mostly live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in Southern China. Some also live in the Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Hunan provinces. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. With the Buyi, Tay–Nùng and other Northern Tai speakers, they are sometimes known as the Rau or Rao people. Their population, estimated at 18 million people, makes them the largest minority in China, followed by Hui and Manchu. Etymology. The Chinese character used for the Zhuang people has changed  several times. Their autonym, "Cuengh" in Standard Zhuang, was originally written with the graphic pejorative , (or "tóng", referring to a variety of wild dog). Chinese characters typically combine a semantic element or radical and a phonetic element. John DeFrancis recorded was previously Tóng, , with "dog radical" and "tóng", phonetic, a slur, but also describes how the People's Republic of China eventually removed it. In 1949, after the Chinese civil war, the logograph was officially replaced with a different graphic pejorative, ("Zhuàng" or "tóng", meaning "child; boy servant"), with the "human radical" with the same phonetic. Later was changed to  a different character , (meaning"strong; robust"). History. The Zhuang are the indigenous peoples of Guangxi, according to Huang Xianfan. The Zhuang's origins can be traced back to the paleolithic ancient human, as demonstrated by a large amount of contemporary archaeological evidence. The Zhuang trace their lineage to the Lạc Việt people through artworks such as the Rock Paintings of Hua Mountain, dating from to the Warring States period (475–221 BC). The Zhuang were mentioned in texts during the Song dynasty. One of the Zhuang leaders, Nong Zhigao, led a rebellion against the Lý dynasty of Đại Việt in 1042 and  declared an independent state of Dali (not to be confused with the Dali Kingdom). He was defeated and later caused trouble in Song territory in 1052. His independent kingdom of Danan (Great South) was short-lived, however, and the Song general Di Qing defeated him. Nong Zhigao and his people fled to the Dali Kingdom, but Dali executed him to appease the Song. The Zhuang continued to cause trouble in the Ming dynasty, which used different groups against one another. One of the bloodiest battles in Zhuang history was that at Big Rattan Gorge against the Yao in 1465, where  20,000 deaths were reported. Parts of Guangxi were ruled by the powerful Cen clan (岑). The Cen were of Zhuang ethnicity and were recognized as tusi or local ruler by the Ming and Qing. The Ming launched several campaigns to civilize the non-Han southwestern people, including the Zhuang, by setting up schools. While the Zhuang became more intimately familiar with Han culture, it did not pacify them, and they continued to cause rebellions into the Qing dynasty. Writing in the 19th century, a Qing dynasty official described the Zhuang thus: Later many Zhuang peasants took part in revolutionary movements  such as the 1911 Revolution as part of the Tongmenghui. In the 1930s, the Kuomintang attempted to control the Zhuang people through force, causing indignation and resentment. In contrast, many Zhuang joined the communist army under the leadership of their Zhuang leader, Wei Baqun. Customs and culture. Gender. The Zhuang system of gender was traditionally egalitarian and female shamans such as A Nong were respected. Families traced their lineage through both male and female members. Men engaged in child rearing and often moved into their wives' families rather than establish their own. Men believed that their wives regularly dosed them  with an elixir called the "Wugu" that would kill them if they were unfaithful. Courting was carried out in a song festival where intended marriage partners responded to each other in rhyme and meter. Languages. While Chinese scholarship continues to place the Zhuang–Dong languages among the Sino-Tibetan family, other linguists treat the Tai languages as a separate family. They have been linked with the Austronesian languages, which dispersed from Taiwan after a migration from the mainland. However, the Austro-Tai hypothesis uniting these families is now supported by only a few scholars. The Zhuang languages are a group  of mutually unintelligible languages of the Tai family, heavily influenced by nearby Sinitic languages such as Cantonese. The Standard Zhuang language is based on a northern dialect, but it is closer to the Bouyei language than Southern Zhuang, so few people learn it. Due to mutually unintelligible languages or dialects, Zhuang people from different areas use Chinese to communicate with each other and Chinese was used as the "lingua franca" in areas of high Zhuang population such as the official Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Whilst according to some semi-official sources "In Guangxi, compulsory education is bilingual in Zhuang and  Chinese, with a focus on early Zhuang literacy," only a small percentage of schools teach written Zhuang. Zhuang has been written using logograms based on Chinese characters ("Sawndip") for over 1,000 years. Standard Zhuang, the official alphabetical script, was introduced in 1957 and in 1982 the Cyrillic letters were changed to Latin letters. However, the traditional character-based script is more commonly used in less formal domains and in June 2017 just over one thousand of these characters were added in Unicode 10.0 . The Zhuang have their own scriptures written in poetic form such as the "Baeu Rodo". Sawndip literature . The literate Zhuang had their own writing system, Sawndip (lit. "uncooked script"), recording folk songs, operas, poems, scriptures, letters, contracts and court documents. The works include both entirely indigenous works and translations from Chinese, fact and fiction, religious texts and secular texts. Names. While most Zhuang people have adopted standard Han Chinese names, some have distinct surnames only found amongst those of Zhuang descent such as "" (), usually pronounced "Qín". When comes to places, some village names in China have the suffix "" (), which means ""village"" in Zhuang (e.g. , , , ). Festivals. The Buluotuo Festival is a three-day event that occurs in April  during which singing and chanting take place. Religion. Most Zhuang follow a traditional animist faith known as Shigongism or Moism, which include elements of ancestor worship. The Mo have their own sutra and professional priests known as "bumo" or "mogong" who traditionally use chicken bones for divination. The bumo read scriptures, perform divination, and other rituals to drive away pestilence. Their sacred scroll is the "Sanqing" (three pure ones). In Chinese the bumo are known as wushi, spiritual mediums. The "wupo", in contrast to the bumo, are elderly women considered to be chosen by god, who sing traditional mountain songs . The role of the wupo is Zhuang religion has been minimized due to influence from Chinese religious traditions. Deities. The Zhuang religion believes that the world is composed of three aspects: heaven, earth, and water. Earth is ruled by the creator god, Baeuqloxdoh (Buluotuo), water by the dragon god, Ngweg, and heaven by the thunder god, Gyaj. Baeuqloxdoh's wife, Meh Nangz, the mother goddess, is also worshiped. Mountains are worshiped in Zhuang culture. Between winter and spring, the Zhuang make a trip to the mountains to sing in the Zhuang style, called "hun gamj gok fwen". Other religions. There  are also a number of Buddhists, Taoists and Christians among the Zhuang. Identity. Some ethnologists view the Zhuang ethnicity as a modern constructed ethnic identity. In the eyes of the ethnologists, the Zhuang culture was not sufficiently divergent from what the ethnologists considered "Han culture", to warrant recognition as a separate ethnic identity. One view is that Zhuang identity was created by the government to weaken Cantonese regional unity. In one instance, a Zhuang student said that he had previously regarded himself as Han Chinese before being taught that he was Zhuang. The Zhuang did not perceive themselves as marginalized  or in need of promotion. Zhuang peasants displayed resistance to the ideal of a formal Romanized Zhuang script, noting that they had used Han script for centuries. Formal classification of the Zhuang also ignored historical similarities between northern Zhuang and the Bouyei people. Genetics. Genetic evidence points out Zhuang possesses a very high frequency of Haplogroup O2 with most of them being subclade O2a making it the most dominant marker, one that they share with Austro-Asiatic. The other portion of O2 belongs to subclade O2a1. Zhuangs have prevalent frequencies of O1 which links them with Austronesian, but O1 is  at much lower rate compared to O2a and only slightly higher than O2a1. Haplogroup O2 in Taiwan aborigines is almost completely non-existent, but they exhibit very high frequencies of O1. This suggests that in the event that the Austro-Tai hypothesis is correct, Tai-Kadai speakers would have assimilated mostly Austro-Asiatic people into their population after the separation of Tai and Austronesian. A Senior City Police Officer Pursues His Roots in China, By Marvine Howe, "The New York Times", 14 November 1985.