As the world's largest nation, population-wise, with an estimated 1,326,064,297 people, China is also very diverse, with an official count of 55 different ethnic minorities plucked from among 400 self-described minorities by the Communist government after 1949. (You can watch the population count go up by one person every two seconds on the clock run by the China Population Information & Research Center at www.cpirc.org.cn.) Most of these are quite naturally situated on the borders of China's vast territory, to the north, west and south of the center of the country.
(For purposes of comparison, the United States government recognizes officially only five groups of minorities: African-Americans; Hispanic/Latino Americans; Asian Americans; Native Hawaiians & Other Pacific Islanders; and Native Americans, American Indians & Alaska Natives.)
The vast majority (over 91%) of China's people are Han, originally a group of many tribes who gradually formed agrarian societies, cultivated land, and organized villages and towns. On the frontiers, deprived of good agricultural land in desert, steppes and jungle, the nomads of those areas came to be regarded by the non-nomads as barbarians, the farther away, the more contemptible. The Han do not all speak the same language, by the way, though Mandarin (officially, Putonghua, "common speech") is the official language and the most used. Second most popular is Cantonese, spoken in Hong Kong and many southern provinces. The written form of Mandarin is used throughout the country, in any case. As to their similarity, an American diplomat fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese told me, "They're related in about the same way as English and Swedish are."
The outlanders, the Huns, the Mongols, and the Manchurians all came through the Great Wall to attack the Han, but the last-named came to stay and assimilate. The Manchu were the last imperial dynasty of China, the Qing (formerly spelled Ch'ing), being replaced in 1911 by the Republic of China, fathered by Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
Minorities Defined
The Chinese government says there are several considerations leading to the definition of a minority group, namely a distinct language, recognized homeland, distinctive customs, and identification within the group. Language families in China today include Sino-Tibetan, Altaic (related to Hungarian and Japanese), Indo-European, Austro-Asiatic, and Austronesian. Among the ethnic groupings, 22 of them have their own unique writing systems that are not Chinese. Distinctive customs include dress, marriage and burial rites, cuisine, religion, and more. Only 18 of the 55 have more than a million people, the Zhuang in southern China boasting more than 15 million.
Among better-known minorities are the Tibetans, with about 5 million people, nearly all of whom live in Tibet itself and four neighboring provinces. The autonomous region (like a province), once an independent nation and incredibly undeveloped, has been pulled into the modern world by today's Communist government in Beijing, a move hastened by the recent opening of the world's highest railway into Lhasa. As has happened so often in history before (think the Americas and Northern Ireland for starters), the occupiers are replacing the indigenous peoples at a rapid pace.
Other easily recognized minorities here include the once-proud ruling Manchu (now nearly 10 million); people from neighboring Korea (2 million); the warrior Miao (over 8 million from the south, near Cambodia and Laos); the once-conquering Mongolian (6 million, mainly settling Inner Mongolia); the colorful Naxi (300,000) in Yunnan and Sichuan; Russian, Tajik, Tartar and Uigur (over 7 million, most of them Uigur, all in far western Xinjiang, an autonomous region); and the Yao and Yi, in southern China, and totaling nearly 8 million people.
The Miao include the well-known Hmong (also Mong) people, who live also in Laos, northern Vietnam, Burma and Thailand, many of whom emigrated to the United States after the end of US military activity in Southeast Asia in 1975. There are twice as many Mongolians in China's Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region, than there are in the Republic of Mongolia itself, to the north. Famed for their warlike leaders, Genghis Khan (c.1167-1227) and his grandson, Kublai Khan (c. 1215-1294), the Mongols established the largest land-based empire in the history of the world, stretching from Korea to Russia and to southern China, and briefly as far west as Poland and Hungary, and as far south as Persia.
Another ethnic minority, the Manchu, ruled all of China from 1644 to 1911. Having conquered China, the Manchu were absorbed and assimilated into the greater Han community, and today, there are less than 100 people who can still speak the Manchu language, it is said. In some places, such as in the Forbidden City, you can still see plaques with both Chinese and Manchu indications written on them, however.
Festivals and theatrical performances of dance and song are frequently given in the ethnic minority regions. Just ask your hotel front desk to direct you toward them during your visit. Authorities of the Olympic Games also say there will be similar performances at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympiad in Beijing in August, 2008.
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Read more about Beijing and China in Frommers.com's Summer Olympic Games 2008 package.