The Di or Beidi (Northern Di) were various ethnic groups who lived north of the Chinese ('' Huaxia'') realms during the

Zhou dynasty The Zhou dynasty ( ) was a royal dynasty of China that existed for 789 years from until 256 BC, the longest span of any dynasty in Chinese history. During the Western Zhou period (771 BC), the royal house, surnamed Ji, had military ...

. Although initially described as nomadic, they seem to have practiced a mixed pastoral, agricultural, and hunting economy and were distinguished from the

nomads Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, Nomadic pastoralism, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and Merchant, trader nomads. In the twentieth century, ...

of the

Eurasian steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or The Steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Europea ...

who lived to their north. Chinese historical accounts describe the Di inhabiting the upper

Ordos Loop The Ordos Plateau, also known as the Ordos Basin or simply the Ordos, is a highland sedimentary basin in parts of most Northern China with an elevation of , and consisting mostly of land enclosed by the Ordos Loop, a large northerly rectangular ...

and gradually migrating eastward to northern

Shanxi Shanxi; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi is a Provinces of China, province in North China. Its capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi a ...

and northern

Hebei Hebei is a Provinces of China, province in North China. It is China's List of Chinese administrative divisions by population, sixth-most populous province, with a population of over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. It bor ...

, where they eventually created their own

states State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

Zhongshan Zhongshan ( zh, c=中山 ), alternately romanized via Cantonese as Chungshan, is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is n ...

and Dai. Other groups of Di seem to have lived interspersed between the Chinese states before their eventual conquest or

sinicization Sinicization, sinofication, sinification, or sinonization (from the prefix , 'Chinese, relating to China') is the process by which non-Chinese societies or groups are acculturated or assimilated into Chinese culture, particularly the language, ...

Name

The ancient Chinese, whose Xia, Shang, and Zhou states flourished along the Fen,

Yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In t ...

, and Wei valleys, discussed their neighbors according to the cardinal directions. The Four Barbarians were the Di to the north, the

Man A man is an adult male human. Before adulthood, a male child or adolescent is referred to as a boy. Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the f ...

to the south, the Yi to the east, and the Rong to the west. These came to be used as generic chauvinistic pejoratives for different peoples long after the conquests of the original tribes and so are all usually translated as '

barbarian A barbarian is a person or tribe of people that is perceived to be primitive, savage and warlike. Many cultures have referred to other cultures as barbarians, sometimes out of misunderstanding and sometimes out of prejudice. A "barbarian" may ...

' in English. Beidi tribes, ethnic groups, or states were sometimes distinguished as belonging to the "Red Di" (赤狄, ''Chidi''), the "White Di" (白狄, ''Baidi''), or "Tall Di" (長狄, ''Changdi''). The Xianyu (

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

( B-S): *''s ��(r)a''), Fei,

, and Dai kingdoms were founded by White Di. According to

Eastern Wu Wu (Chinese language, Chinese: 吳; pinyin: ''Wú''; Middle Chinese *''ŋuo'' < Eastern Han Chinese: ''*ŋuɑ''), known in historiography as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, was a Dynasties of China, dynastic state of China and one of the three major sta ...

scholar Wei Zhao, Xianyu's founders dwelt among the Di yet shared the same ancestral surname Ji 姬 with the Zhou kings. William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart (2014) reconstruct the

pronunciation of as *''lˤek''; sometimes was written as , whose pronunciation was reconstructed as *''lˤewk''. Paul R. Goldin, professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at University of Pennsylvania, proposes that 狄/翟 was a pejorative "pseudo-ethnonym" made by Chinese for the northern "barbarians" and it meant "feathered".Goldin, Paul R. "Steppe Nomads as a Philosophical Problem in Classical China" in ''Mapping Mongolia: Situating Mongolia in the World from Geologic Time to the Present. Penn Museum International Research Conferences, vol. 2''. Ed. Paula L.W. Sabloff. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. 2011. p. 235

History

Surviving accounts of the culture and history of China's early neighbors mostly date from the late Zhou. The '' Book of Rites'' notes:

The people of those five regions— the Middle states, and the ong i (and other wild tribes round them)—had all their several natures, which they could not be made to alter. The tribes on the east were called i They had their hair unbound, and tattooed their bodies. Some of them ate their food without its being cooked. Those on the south were called Man. They tattooed their foreheads, and had their feet turned in towards each other. Some of them (also) ate their food without its being cooked. Those on the west were called ong They had their hair unbound, and wore skins. Some of them did not eat grain-food. Those on the north were called i They wore skins of animals and birds, and dwelt in caves. Some of them also did not eat grain-food. The people of the Middle states, and of those i Man, ong and i all had their dwellings, where they lived at ease; their flavours which they preferred; the clothes suitable for them; their proper implements for use; and their vessels which they prepared in abundance. In those five regions, the languages of the people were not mutually intelligible, and their likings and desires were different. To make what was in their minds apprehended, and to communicate their likings and desires, (there were officers)—in the east, called transmitters; in the south, representationists; in the west, i-dis and in the north, interpreters.

The Di were often associated with the Rong; both were considered more warlike and less civilized than the Yi or Man. According to the ''

Records of the Grand Historian The ''Shiji'', also known as ''Records of the Grand Historian'' or ''The Grand Scribe's Records'', is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st ce ...

'', the ancestors of the Zhou lived in lands near the Rong and Di for fourteen generations, until

Gugong Danfu King Tai of Zhou () or Gugong Danfu () was a leader of the Predynastic Zhou during the Shang dynasty in ancient China. His great-grandson King Wu of Zhou, Fa would later conquer the Shang and establish the Zhou dynasty. Name "King Tai" was a posth ...

led then away to the mid- Wei River valley where they built their capital near Mount Qi. During the

Eastern Zhou The Eastern Zhou (256 BCE) is a period in Chinese history comprising the latter two-thirds of the Zhou dynasty. The period follows the Western Zhou era and is named due to the Zhou royal court relocating the capital eastward from Fenghao ...

, the Chinese states—particularly Jin—expanded into Di territories, after which the Di were often their enemies. The "White Di" lived north of Qin and west of the

Yellow River The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan H ...

in what is now northern

Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...

through the first half of the

Spring and Autumn period The Spring and Autumn period () was a period in History of China, Chinese history corresponding roughly to the first half of the Eastern Zhou (256 BCE), characterized by the gradual erosion of royal power as local lords nominally subject t ...

; tribes began crossing the river into northern

in the second half. *676-651 BC: Duke Xian of Jin conquered a number of Rong and Di groups. *662 BC: The Di drove the Rong out of

Taiyuan Taiyuan; Mandarin pronunciation: (Jin Chinese, Taiyuan Jin: /tʰai˦˥ ye˩˩/) is the capital of Shanxi, China. Taiyuan is the political, economic, cultural and international exchange center of Shanxi Province. It is an industrial base foc ...

. *662-659 BC: The state of Xing was nearly destroyed by the Red Di until it was rescued by the

State of Qi Qi, or Ch'i in Wade–Giles romanization, was a ancient Chinese state, regional state of the Zhou dynasty in History of China#Ancient China, ancient China, whose rulers held Zhou dynasty nobility, titles of ''Hou'' (), then ''Gong (title), Go ...

. *660 BC: The Red Di took the capital of the State of Wey and killed its ruler, but were driven out by Qi. *660 to 507 BC: Jin fought many wars with the Di. The Di eventually also established treaties of marriage and trade with the various Chinese states. The Jin prince Chong'er fled to his mother's family among them for many years until assassins sent by his brother forced him to begin wandering through the Chinese states. *640 BC: The Di were allied with Qi and Xing against Wey. *636 BC: The Di helped the Zhou king against the state of Cheng. The Xianyu and "White Di" moved east from the areas around the

in north

and northwest

into the

Taihang Mountains The Taihang Mountains () are a Chinese mountain range running down the eastern edge of the Loess Plateau in Shanxi, Henan and Hebei provinces. The range extends over from north to south and has an average elevation of ; its principal peak is ...

of Shanxi and

during the 6th centuryBC. The "White Di" were especially numerous on the upper reaches of the Xinding or Hutuo Valley. *594 BC: Jin 'destroyed' the Red Di state of Lushi (潞氏). In 569BC, the Dao Duke of Jin announced a new peaceful policy towards the barbarians (和戎, ''he Rong''). He ended Jin's expansionist invasions of foreign lands and instead bartered with their leaders, purchasing territory for valuable Chinese objects like ritual bronzes and bells. During this period, the "White Di" began to move east of

and the

. In 541BC, Jin ceased the ''he Rong'' policy and became violent again, attacking the Wuzhong (無終) and the "Numerous Di" (群狄, ''Qundi'') in what is now Taiyuan Prefecture. *541 BC: Jin 'subjugated' the Red Di state of Lushi. From the Taiyuan Basin, Jin pushed east through the Jingxing Pass (井陘) and attacked the "White Di" in the

(530–520BC). By this time, the Di had walled towns like Fei, Gu, and Qiu You (仇由) and fought on foot. *531 BC: Jin attacked the Xianyu and Fei. *507 BC: Jin was severely defeated by the Xianyu Di. *406 BC: Zhongshan was conquered by the

State of Wei Wei (; ) was one of the seven major State (Ancient China), states during the Warring States period of ancient China. It was created from the three-way Partition of Jin, together with Han (Warring States), Han and Zhao (state), Zhao. Its territo ...

. By 400BC, most of the Di and Rong had been eliminated as independent polities. *377 BC: Zhongshan regained its independence. *295 BC: Zhongshan was conquered by the

State of Zhao Zhao () was one of the seven major states during the Warring States period of ancient China. It emerged from the tripartite division of Jin, along with Han and Wei, in the 5th century BC. Zhao gained considerable strength from the military ...

. *-265 BC: Tian Dan fought with Di who lived in the state of Qi.

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography