The Gyami (, "

Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...

") were a Han people of

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

at the foot of the

Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or Qingzang Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central Asia, Central, South Asia, South, and East Asia. Geographically, it is located to the north of H ...

who were reported by

Brian Houghton Hodgson Brian Houghton Hodgson (1 February 1801 – 23 May 1894) was a pioneer natural history, naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident (title), Resident. He described numerous species of birds and mammals fr ...

in 1874. According to Hodgson, who thought the Gyami descended from a Chinese military outpost, the Chinese considered the Gyami to be Qiangic speakers, suggesting that they did not recognize them as Han Chinese and that they did not use

Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...

Victor H. Mair Victor Henry Mair (; born March 25, 1943) is an American Sinology, sinologist currently serving as a professor of Chinese language, Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania. Among other accomplishments, Mair has edited the standard ''Columbia His ...

notes that what little is recorded of their speech indicates a degree of assimilation to local languages, but that it is clearly a variety of Mandarin.

References

Mandarin Chinese Ethnic groups in China {{China-stub