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03-26-2009 20:31

The Qiang people are an ethnic group. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups of Zhonghua Minzu, Chinese Nation, with a population of approximately 200,000 living in Aba Autonamous Region, northwestern Sichuan province. Nowadays, the Qiang are only a small segment of the population, but they are commonly believed to be an old, once strong and populous people whose history can be traced to the Shang Dynasty of 3,000 years ago and whose offspring include the Tibetans and many minorities in southwestern China. They live in high mountains and their daily life used to be based on herding goats so thery are called goatherd in clouds.

Early history

In ancient China, Qiang was usually used as a generic term for the non-Han peoples in the northwest. These peoples were frequently at war with the inhabitants of the Yellow River valley, the ancestors of ethnic Hans. Not until the rise of the state of Qin under Duke Mu was the Qiang expansion effectively checked.

The structure of the graph 羌 also reflects this view. It was composed of two elements: 人 (man) and 羊 (sheep), suggesting a sheep-herding people. During the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD) and Wei-Jin periods (221-419), Qiang were widely distributed along the mountainous fringes of the northern and eastern Tibetan Plateau, from the Kunlun Mountains (崑崙山) in Xinjiang province, and eastern Qinghai area, to southern Gansu, western Sichuan, and northern Yunnan.

Later, the Chinese restricted the term Qiang min 羌民 (Qiang people registered with the Chinese government) to refer to sinicized non-Han living in the Min River valley in Sichuan and used the term Fan Qiang 番羌 (barbarian Qiang) to refer to less sinicized non-Han living in the vicinity.

Recent history

At present, the Qiang have a self-identity, referring to themselves as Qiang zu (羌族) and erma or rma (爾瑪). There are some 198,000 Qiang today in western Sichuan, predominantly in the five counties of Maoxian, Wenchuan, Lixian, Beichuan and Heishui, of the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. On 12 May 2008, the Qiang people were heavily affected by a major earthquake, whose epicenter was in Wenchuan County.

The Qiang today are mountain dwellers. A fortress village, zhai 寨, composed of 30 to 100 households, in general is the basic social unit beyond the household. An average of two to five fortress villages in a small valley along a mountain stream, known in local Chinese as gou 溝, make up a village cluster (cun 村). The inhabitants of fortress village or village cluster have close contact in social life. In these small valleys, people cultivate narrow fluvial plains along creeks or mountain terraces, hunt animals or collect mushrooms and herbs (for food or medicine) in the neighboring woods, and herd yaks and horses on the mountain-top pastures. In the past, warfare between villages was common.

From the linguistic point of view, all modern Qiang people speak one of two Qiang languages, which are members of the Qiangic sub-family of Tibeto-Burman. However, dialects are so different that communication between different Qiang groups is often in Chinese. Lacking a script of their own, the Qiang also use Chinese characters.

Customs

The matrilineal Qiang society is primarily monogamous, although polyandry and cross-cousin marriages are accepted. Since most women are older than their husbands and also work as the leading people in agricultural activities, they act as the head of the family as well as the society.

Romantic love is considered important, and sexual freedom is prevalent, as the Qiang find marriages important. In the past, marriages were organized by the parents, with approval from the children. It still is not unusual for brides to live in their parents' houses for a year or so after the marriage, and the children were usually separated from their parents after marriage, except for the first son and his family. However, such habits have been gradually discarded with the coming of liberation.

The Qiang also have a rigid taboo system in their birth and death. Prior to the birth of a baby, a pregnant woman is not allowed to go near the riverside or well, be at a wedding ceremony, or stand in the watchtower.

Upon a delivery, a Duangong shaman is invited to help the delivery procedure, and strangers are not allowed to wail or enter the house. This is prevented by hanging up a flail on the gate for a week upon the birth of a boy, and a bamboo basket upon the birth of a girl.