China’s 56 Ethnic Groups

By Minnesotastan in Everything Else on Dec 2, 2009 at 10:58 pm

Chinese ethnic Kazak The vast majority (>90%) of Chinese are Han Chinese. The remainder are distributed among 55 other ethnic groups. This diversity was awkwardly displayed during the opening ceremonies of the last Olympic games, when a parade of 56 children representing those groups was later revealed to have been comprised of 56 Han Chinese children wearing the ethnic clothing of the other groups.

Now there is a photoessay which appears to correct that gaffe. All of the ethnic groups are portrayed in professionally composed group portraits, with the subjects wearing traditional dress and often carrying traditional instruments or tools. Pictured above as an example are the ethnic Kazak; the others are at the link. It’s an impressive photo gallery.

Link.

Tags: China, ethnic groups

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LisaL
Dec 2nd, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Very cool photos. The traditional clothing is quite stunning.
Noelegy
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 12:21 am
Lisa stole the word I was going to use! “Stunning” was the first thing that came to mind. I also liked how so many of the photos showed all ages of people. Very beautiful and fascinating.
pfelelep
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 1:57 am
Beautiful pictures. It’s really impressive indeed.
flux
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 4:41 am
Very beautiful and sad. What would have happened to all these unique cultures, I wonder, had they been left alone and encouraged to bloom? As fantastic as they are, I can’t help but wonder how moreso they could have been. What a pity…to see such bold identity bow before the relentless march of modernization and at the hands of another stronger civilization.
(Being from the US I often find myself mulling over the fate the variety of Native American cultures has suffered as well and what path they might have taken in their own time.)
marcus
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 6:48 am
In case if you are wondering, no there are no foreigners in these photos: they are all Chinese, some looking more foreign than others.
Also, a majority of these tribes influenced Han Chinese and Southeast Asian cultures, especially Manchurian and the Yunnan tribes. So this is rather refreshing to look at, and as a Han Chinese I’m grateful to have met some of these tribes back in China.
felixthecat
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 7:45 am
These are the “official” ethnic groups as defined by Communist China. Other groups are either unrecognized, ignored as irrelevant, or lumped in with the official groups. The Taiwanese government recognizes on that island 12-13 ethnic aboriginal groups, but the mainland does not.
secret asian man
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 9:36 am
“What would have happened to all these unique cultures, I wonder, had they been left alone and encouraged to bloom?”

Aww! Upper-middle-class white guilt!

Your culture can be so adorable sometimes.

Cultures do not bloom in isolation. Every hot pepper found in all of Asia had its roots in Mexico, and was brought over by the Spanish and Portuguese. Every tomato in Italy has roots in North America. My culture has gained much from the west – a sense of openness, individualism, and respect for human rights.

I’m sure you hate this though. You’d rather take us and throw us in little static exhibits in the zoo, so you can coo over us “authentic” minorities.
Pooja
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 10:18 am
I think that India should do a spread like this. It would take SOO long though. But India’s minorities actually still exist. Also, since when is Russian a Chinese minority? They have their own country.
Ronald
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
I’m from SE Asia and have lived in the US for ten years. Western/US/European media is a lot more fair and accurate (and more critical of their own governments) than the Chinese media (which is largely state-controlled). Hope China becomes as prosperous, stable and democratic as the U.S. in the near future. That they aren’t yet can be seen from the thousands that study (then immigrate) to the U.S. and other countries (such as Australia and NZ) every year.
ted
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Wow, flux, we can’t blame the Han dynasty unless we can prove than Han shot first.
abdulhamid
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Who still says they all look alike?
G
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Beautiful photos! It makes me want to learn more about each culture!
ByrdBrain
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Secret Asian Man gets +1 internets for his comment. Bravo.
PK
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
@flux: Then one of those cultures will bloom to the point that it will engulf other groups. If it’s not Han Chinese, it will just be another ethnic group that rules the country.

And just in case you didn’t know, that already happened in China 300 hundred years ago. The ruling ethnic group was Manchurian, not Han. And then there were Mongols a longer time ago. And then Han Chinese were a combination of many groups and separate kingdoms even longer time ago.

I know, it’s hard not to feel guilty about how American culture pretty much consumed the whole world by now.
Noelegy
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Secret Asian Man gets another +1 Internets for his screen name.
Andrea A
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
And then we’d have to go back even further to the conquering of all the Chinese tribes and the advent of the Qin dynasty…thus the word China.

Not all are ethnically “Chinese though.” Clearly the Russians, Uzbeks, Koreans, etc are representative of immigrant groups which are prevalent in China.

Very cool though!
Digma03
Dec 3rd, 2009 at 8:58 pm
This was really fascinating. It was neat seeing some of the overlap with a few Turkic groups like the Kazak, Tatar and Kyrgyz.
knitrat
Dec 4th, 2009 at 4:11 am
I heard a lecture on this subject at my university the other day. The gist of the history I heard was.. when the Maoists were making inroads in China, they promised the approximately 450 ethnic groups that existed at the time that they would be granted autonomy if they supported the communists. So they did, but weren’t granted autonomy.. then the groups were permitted to apply to be recognized as ‘official’ ethnic groups. About 300 applied but only 12 or so were approved. Eventually over the years more were added, with the last added in the 1970s I think.

So there are many groups that continue to fight for recognition but are bunched in with other groups that they do not share dialect or other forms of culture with..

No one has the corner on oppression though. We can all be oppressors or those oppressed. For example people forget that before being a Buddhist nation, Tibet was a culture of warlords that devastated other nations. I agree with secret asian guy, guilt is an easy emotion that feeds our inflated sense of our own importance in the world.
Llily
Feb 14th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
The only fault I find with this is the photo for the Han Chinese group. What are they wearing? It appears to be an amalgation of clothing from other ethnicities. There is no sense of unity. The photographer should have used authentic Han Chinese clothing (the kind worn before the Manchu invasion of 1644) in order to represent this group correctly.

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