The Zhuang Peoples

The majority of the Zhuang live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (90% in 1984), a province comparable in size to New Zealand. In 1984 in Nanning, its capital, 83,000 of the 500,000 persons living there were Zhuang while in the surrounding countryside they made up 80% of the population. A great number of the Zhuang live in villages in the mountainous areas, specifically in the western two thirds of Guangxi. The Zhuang may also be found in most of Guangxi's major cities, in each case making up to a third of the population. The remainder live in Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou, and Hunan Provinces.

The Zhuang language has two major divisions, Northern Zhuang and Southern Zhuang, and descends from the Thai language family. (Even though their language is a part of the same family, the Thai people and the Zhuang cannot understand one another.) A 65% lexical similarity exists between Northern and Southern Zhuang; one source indicates that the two languages are similar in grammatical structure and vocabulary. Ten million people, including all sub-dialect speakers, speak Northern Zhuang; four million, including all sub-dialect speakers, speak Southern Zhuang. One source, whose information is not reflected in what is below, reports that the Zhuang language has over 50 dialects. Many Zhuang also speak Cantonese and Mandarin.

The Zhuang are an offshoot of a Thai-related people group that over 2,000 years ago dwelt over a large area of Southern China. The Zhuang probably emigrated from the south in Vietnam. Archaeological digs done in Bai-lian Dong near Liu-zhou and Zhen-pi Yan near Guilin have turned up burial sites with burial styles common not to China but to Vietnam. These burial styles also suggest a relationship between the Zhuang and the Haobinhian (9000-5600 BC) and Bacsonian (8300-5900 BC) cultures of Vietnam.

The Han Chinese, the nationality (not the dynasty) that ruled between 206 BC to 220 AD, expanded into the Zhuang locale of Guangxi in the year 221 BC. This was under the Qin dynasty emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who first unified the country. He had unified what was before known as China; however, he was not content with that and sought to annex the lands, and subsequently conquer the peoples, southward. Though he had conquered these peoples, he did not supplant entirely their pre-existing political forms and social institutions. By nature, this left the Zhuang with some autonomy. He did bring in, if only for a short period of time, some of the features of the central governing system, and he also established three prefectures. Qin oversaw the building of the Li canal at Xing-an that linked the southern and central river systems.

The Qin dynasty did not last long after the death of Qin Shi Huang. The reason for this is that he made such drastic reforms in China that the rest of the country could not catch up with her ruler's tight-fisted demands. Eventually the Han dynasty took over. During the period of upheaval in the Qin Dynasty, a Han Chinese, Zhao Tuo, declared himself "Martial King of the Southern Yue." The region he controlled included the Zhuang areas. It was not until 111 BC that the area under his control was again conquered by the Han Dynasty.

The Zhuang, over the years, have had involvement in battles with encroaching foreigners. In the 1070s, they fought against a people known as the Annamese. Then, in the middle of the 16th century, they fought against Japanese pirates who invaded their shores. Later, in the 1800s, they formed the Black Banner Army along with the Han Chinese and defeated the intruding French near Hanoi in both 1873 and 1882. Again, in 1885, they fought against the French and won a victory that proved crucial at Zhennanguan, a pass on the Sino-Vietnamese border.

The Zhuang also joined in the revolutions that began at the beginning of the 20th century. First, they joined with Sun Yatsen in his revolutionary organization, Tong Meng Hui. Later, in 1925, a communist organization was established in the Zhuang area. Whether or not they participated in the revolution is not clear, however.

Singing is a favorite activity of the Zhuang people, China's largest minority group. Singing contests are a part of every festival. There are old songs, an important part of the Zhuang oral tradition; there are also new songs, invented on the spur of the moment. Much of the point of Zhuang singing contests is to show one's quickness in composing verses. One person will sing out a greeting or question; the one sung to must frame a response and sing back without delay.

Urban Zhuang are often almost indistinguishable from Chinese. They have intermarried with the Chinese and over several generations have adopted the Chinese language and customs. This is not to say that they have lost all Zhuang identity, for the Chinese in Nanning and other cities of Guangxi have adopted some Zhuang customs as well. Both Zhuang and Chinese celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival in the fifth lunar month. For the holiday's major event, teams of twenty men sit in pairs in long canoe-like boats plying their oars with vigor. Each boat's prow is carved in the shape of a dragon's head and scaly designs are painted along the sides.

One way the Zhuang hold fast to their ethnic identity is through the preservation of their language. The Zhuang language remained unwritten until the 1950s when an alphabet based on the Roman alphabet was developed. Now, some Zhuang primary school children in Guangxi are receiving a bilingual education learning both Zhuang and Chinese.

Rural Zhuang, more than city dwellers, still adhere to their traditional way of life and their traditional religion, animism. They believe in many spirits, often malicious, who control the events of their lives and must be placated. When a person falls ill, a spirit medium will be called in to perform elaborate ceremonies at the sick person's bedside. Incense will be burned and food offered to the spirits. The medium may go into a trance hoping to discover what spirit is causing the illness. She may cajole and threaten the spirits to induce them to leave and throw a kind of dice to determine when the sick one will be cured.