The Tujia (
Northern Tujia: ''Bifjixkhar'' / ''Bifzixkar'',
IPA: , Southern Tujia: ''Mongrzzir'', ; ) are an
ethnic group
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...
and, with a total
population
Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...
of over 8 million, the eighth-largest
officially recognized ethnic minority
The term "minority group" has different meanings, depending on the context. According to common usage, it can be defined simply as a group in society with the least number of individuals, or less than half of a population. Usually a minority g ...
in the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
. They live in the
Wuling Mountains, straddling the common borders of
Hunan
Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...
,
Hubei
Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland ...
and
Guizhou
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption =
, image_map = Guizhou in China (+all claims hatched).svg
, mapsize = 275px
, map_alt = Map showing the location of Guizhou Province
, map_caption = Map s ...
Provinces
A province is an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outside Italy. The term ''provi ...
and
Chongqing
ChongqingPostal Romanization, Previously romanized as Chungking ();. is a direct-administered municipality in Southwestern China. Chongqing is one of the four direct-administered municipalities under the State Council of the People's Republi ...
Municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality' ...
.
The
endonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
''Bizika'' means "native dwellers". In Chinese, ''Tujia'' literally means "local families", in contrast to the
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
(), whose name literally means "guest families" and implies migration.
Origins
Although there are different accounts of their origins, the Tujia may trace their history back over twelve centuries, and possibly beyond to the ancient
Ba people who occupied the area around modern-day
Chongqing
ChongqingPostal Romanization, Previously romanized as Chungking ();. is a direct-administered municipality in Southwestern China. Chongqing is one of the four direct-administered municipalities under the State Council of the People's Republi ...
some 2,500 years ago. The
Ba Kingdom reached the zenith of its power between 600 BC and 400 BC but was annexed by the
Qin in 316 BC.
After being referred to by a long succession of different names in ancient documents, the Tujia appeared in historical records from about 14th century onwards.
Ming and Qing dynasties
The Tujia
tusi
''Tusi'', often translated as "headmen" or "chieftains", were hereditary tribal leaders recognized as imperial officials by the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties of China, and the Later Lê and Nguyễn dynasties of Vietnam. They ruled certain ...
chieftains reached the zenith of their power under the
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...
(1368–1644), when they were accorded comparatively high status by the imperial court. They achieved this through their reputation as providers of fierce, highly disciplined fighting men, who were employed by the emperor to suppress revolts by other minorities. On numerous occasions, they helped defend China against outside invaders, such as the ''
wokou
''Wokou'' ( zh, c=, p=Wōkòu; ; Hepburn romanization, Hepburn: ; ; literal Chinese translation: "dwarf bandits"), which translates to "Japanese pirates", were pirates who raided the coastlines of China and Korea from the 13th century to the 17 ...
'' ("Japanese" pirates) who ravaged the coast during the 16th century.
The
Manchus
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) an ...
invaded and conquered the Ming in 1644 and established the Great Qing Empire, known in China as the
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
. Ever suspicious of local rulers, the Qing emperors always tried to replace Han officials with Manchu officials wherever they could. In the early 18th century, the Qing court finally felt secure enough to establish direct control over minority areas as well. This process, known as ''gaituguiliu'' (literally 'replace the local
uler return to mainstream
entral rule), was carried out throughout South-West China gradually and, in general, peacefully. The court adopted a
carrot and stick
The phrase "carrot and stick" is a metaphor for when two different methods of incentivisation are simultaneously employed; the "carrot", referring to the promising and giving of desired rewards in exchange for cooperation; and the "stick", refe ...
approach of lavish pensions for compliant
chieftains, coupled with a huge show of military force on the borders of their territories.
Most of the Tujia areas returned to central control during the period 1728–1735. While the rule of the Qing government was more orderly compared to the rule of chieftains, many in the Tujia peasantry came to resent the attempts of the Qing court to impose national culture and customs on them. With the weakening of central Qing rule, numerous large-scale uprisings occurred, culminating in the violent
Taiping Rebellion
The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution, was a civil war in China between the Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The conflict lasted 14 years, from its outbreak in 1850 until the fall of ...
.
Recent history
Following the collapse of the Qing, the Tujia found themselves caught between various competing
warlord
Warlords are individuals who exercise military, Economy, economic, and Politics, political control over a region, often one State collapse, without a strong central or national government, typically through informal control over Militia, local ...
s. More and more land was given over to the cultivation of high-earning
opium
Opium (also known as poppy tears, or Lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the seed Capsule (fruit), capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid mor ...
at the insistence of wealthy landlords and
banditry
Banditry is a type of organized crime committed by outlaws typically involving the threat or use of violence. A person who engages in banditry is known as a bandit and primarily commits crimes such as extortion, robbery, kidnapping, and murder, ...
was rife. After the founding of the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
in 1949, Tujia areas came under communist control and banditry was rapidly eradicated. The
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward was an industrialization campaign within China from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to transform the country from an agrarian society into an indu ...
led to mass famine in Tujia communities.
The Tujia were officially recognized as one of the 55
ethnic minorities
The term "minority group" has different meanings, depending on the context. According to common usage, it can be defined simply as a group in society with the least number of individuals, or less than half of a population. Usually a minority g ...
in January 1957 and a number of
autonomous prefecture
Autonomous prefectures ( zh, c=自治州, p=zìzhìzhōu) are one type of autonomous administrative divisions of China, autonomous administrative division in China, existing at the Prefecture-level divisions of China, prefectural level, with eith ...
s and
counties
A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...
were subsequently established.
State Councillor
Dai Bingguo, one of China's top officials on foreign policy, is the most prominent Tujia in the Chinese government.
Culture
Today, traditional Tujia customs can only be found in the most remote areas.
The Tujia are renowned for their singing and song composing abilities and for their tradition of the
Baishou dance (摆手舞), a 500-year-old collective dance which uses 70 ritual gestures to represent war, farming, hunting, courtship and other aspects of traditional life. They are also famous for their richly patterned
brocade
Brocade () is a class of richly decorative shuttle (weaving), shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in coloured silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian langua ...
, known as ''xilankapu'', a product that in earlier days regularly figured in their tribute payments to the Chinese court. For their spring festival they prepare handmade
glutinous rice
Domestication syndrome refers to two sets of phenotypic traits that are common to either domesticated plants or domesticated animals.
Domesticated animals tend to be smaller and less aggressive than their wild counterparts; they may also hav ...
cakes called
ciba cake. They gather round the fire to sing
folk song
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
s and eat grilled ciba.
Regarding religion, most of the Tujia worship a white tiger totem, although some Tujia in western Hunan worship a turtle totem.
Language
Tujia is a
Sino-Tibetan language and is usually considered an isolate within this group. It has some grammatical and phonological similarities with
Nuosu, though its vocabulary is very different.
Brief Introduction to the Tujia Language
/ref>
Today there are at most 70,000 native speakers of the Tujia language, most of whom live in the northern parts Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in North-Western Hunan Province
Hunan is an inland province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Guangdong and Guangxi to the south, and Guizhou and Chon ...
.
The vast majority of the Tujia use varieties of Chinese
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...
, mainly Southwestern Mandarin
Southwestern Mandarin (), also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin (), is a Mandarin Chinese dialect spoken in much of Southwestern China, including in Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the northwestern part of Hunan, the nor ...
; a few speak Hmongic languages
The Hmongic languages, also known as Miao languages ( zh, s=苗语, p=Miáoyǔ), include the various languages spoken by the Miao people (such as Hmong, Hmu, and Xong). Hmongic languages also include various languages spoken by non- Mienic-spe ...
. Few monolingual Tujia speakers remain; nearly all are bilingual in some dialect of Chinese. Children now learn Chinese from childhood and many young Tujia prefer to use Chinese when communicating among themselves. Among fluent Tujia speakers, Chinese borrowings and even sentence structures, are more common.
Distribution
By province
The Fifth National Population Census of 2000 recorded 8,028,133 Tujia in China.
;Provincial Distribution of the Tujia:
In Chongqing, Tujia make up 4.67% of the total population; in Hunan, 4.17%; in Guizhou, 4.06%; in Hubei, 3.66%; and in Guangdong, 0.16%.
By county
;County-level distributions of the Tujia
(Only includes counties or county-equivalents containing >0.5% of China's Tujia population.)
Autonomous Areas Designated for Tujia
Famous Tujia
* Zhuodiao Kuang, Biostatistian
*He Long
He Long (; March 22, 1896 – June 9, 1969) was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and a Marshal of the People's Republic of China. He was from a poor rural family in Hunan, and his family was not able to provide him with any formal education. H ...
* Dai Bingguo
* Lan Xiya, actress
* Leo Li
* Liao Guoxun
* Ren Zhenhe, Governor of Gansu
Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...
* Shang Chunsong
* Shen Mengchen
*Tian Tao
Tian Tao (; born 8 April 1994) is a Chinese Olympic weightlifting, weightlifter, Olympian, World Champion, Asian Champion and Asian Games Champion competing in the 85 kg division until 2018 and 96 kg starting in 2018 after the Interna ...
, Olympic weightlifter
* Zhou Xianwang, Mayor of Wuhan
Wuhan; is the capital of Hubei, China. With a population of over eleven million, it is the most populous city in Hubei and the List of cities in China by population, eighth-most-populous city in China. It is also one of the nine National cent ...
* Zhou Yiwei, actor
* Zhang Ju, musician
* Huang Yongyu, painter
* Xiang Xuan
* Qin Haiyang
* Li Kaiwen, mixed martial artist
Mixed martial arts (MMA) is a full-contact fighting sport based on striking and grappling; incorporating techniques from various combat sports from around the world.
In the early 20th century, various inter-stylistic contests took place t ...
References
Citations
Sources
*Brown, M.J. (2001). "Ethnic Classification and Culture: The Case of the Tujia in Hubei, China," ''Asian Ethnicity'' 2(1): 55–72.
*Brown, M.J. (2004). "They Came with Their Hands Tied behind Their Backs" – Forced Migrations, Identity Changes, and State Classification in Hubei. ''Is Taiwan Chinese?'' (pp. 166–210). Berkeley: University of California Press.
*Brown, M.J. (2007). "Ethnic Identity, Cultural Variation, and Processes of Change – Rethinking the Insights of Standardization and Orthopraxy". ''Modern China''. 33(1): 91–124. Sage Publications.
*---- 2002. "Local Government Agency: Manipulating Tujia Identity," ''Modern China''.
*Ch'en, J. (1992). ''The Highlanders of Central China: A History 1895–1937''. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
*Dong, L. (1999). ''Ba feng Tu yun—Tujia wenhua yuanliu jiexi (Ba Manners, Tu Charm—An Analysis of the Origins of Tujia Culture).'' Wuhan: Wuhan Daxue Chubanshe.
*Dong, L., Brown, M.J., Wu, X. (2002). Tujia. ''Encyclopedia of World Cultures – Supplement''. C. Ember, M. Ember & I. Skoggard (eds.), NY: Macmillan Reference USA, pp. 351–354.
*Huang B. (1999). "Tujiazu Zuyuan Yanjiu Zonglun" ("A Review of Research on Tujia Ancestral Origins"). In ''Tujia zu lizhi wenhua lunji'' (A Colloquium on Tujia History and Culture), edited by Huang Baiquan and Tian Wanzheng. 25–42. Enshi, Hubei: Hubei Minzu Xueyuan.
*Li, S. (1993). ''Chuandong Youshui Tujia'' (Tujia of the Youshui River in East Sichuan). Chengdu: Chengdu Chubanshe.
*Peng, B., Peng, X. et al. (1981). Jishou University Journal, Humanities Edition #2: Special Issue on Tujia Ethnography n Chinese Jishou: Jishou University.
*Shih C. (2001). "Ethnicity as Policy Expedience: Clan Confucianism in Ethnic Tujia-Miao Yongshun," ''Asian Ethnicity'' 2(1): 73–88.
*Sutton, D. (2000). "Myth Making on an Ethnic Frontier: The Cult of the Heavenly Kings of West Hunan, 1715–1996," ''Modern China'' 26(4): 448–500.
*Sutton, D. (2003). "Violence and Ethnicity on a Qing Colonial Frontier: Customary and Statutory Law in the Eighteenth-Century Miao Pale". In: ''Modern Asian Studies'' 37(1): 41–80. Cambridge University Press.
*Sutton, D. (2007). "Ritual, Cultural Standardization, and Orthopraxy in China: Reconsidering James L. Watson’s Ideas". In: ''Modern China'' 33(1): 3–21. Sage Publications.
*Tien, D., He, T., Chen, K., Li, J., Xie, Z., Peng, X. (1986). ''Tujiayu Jianzhi'' (A Brief Chronicle of the Tujia Language). Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe.
*Wu, X. (1996). "Changes of chieftains' external policy in the Three Gorges Area in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties 630s–1660s. In: ''Ethnic Forum'', (3): 88–92. (Hunan, China)
*Wu, X. (1997). "Tujia's food-getting pattern in west Hubei in the Qing Dynasty". In: ''Journal of Hubei Institute for Nationalities'', (2): 33–35. (Hubei, China)
*Wu, X. (1997). "On the Tage Dance". In: ''Journal of Chinese Classics and Culture'', (2): 22–29. (Beijing, China)
*Wu, X. (2003). "Food, Ethnoecology and Identity in Enshi Prefecture, Hubei, China". (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Alberta, 388 pages).
*Wu, X. (2003). "Turning Waste into Things of Value": Marketing Fern, Kudzu and Osmunda in Enshi Prefecture, China. In: ''Journal of Developing Societies'', 19(4): 433–457.
*Wu, X. (2004). "Ethnic Foods" and Regional Identity: the Hezha Restaurants in Enshi. In: ''Food and Foodways'', 12(4): 225–246.
*Wu, X. (2005). "The New Year's Eve Dinner and Wormwood Meal: Festival Foodways as Ethnic Markers in Enshi". In: ''Modern China'', 31(3): 353–380.
*Wu, X. (2006). "Maize, Ecosystem Transition and Ethnicity in Enshi Prefecture, China". In: ''East Asian History'', 31(1): 1–22.
*Wu, X. (2010). "Tujia National Minority". '' Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion''.
*Ye, D. (1995). ''Tujiayu yanjiu'' (Studies of the Tujia Language). Jishou, Hunan: Hunan Chu Wenhua Zhongxin, Jishou Daxue.
External links
Tujia Culture Web
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tujia People
Ethnic groups in Sichuan
Ethnic groups officially recognized by China
Ethnic groups in Hunan