Hunanese people
![]() Two Hunannese men counting brass coins in Changde, circa 1900-1919. | |
Total population | |
---|---|
38,149,000[1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
![]() | Hunan Northeastern Guangxi parts of Guizhou |
![]() | As a small part of Mainlander population of Taiwan island |
Languages | |
Xiang Chinese Mandarin Chinese | |
Religion | |
Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese folk religion |
The Hunanese people or Xiang-speaking Chinese (Chinese: 湖湘民系; pinyin: Huxiang minxi; Xiang Chinese: 湘語人 Shiōn'nỳ nin) are a Xiang-speaking Han ethnic subgroup originating from Hunan province in Southern China,[2] but Xiang-speaking people are also found in the adjacent provinces of Guangxi and Guizhou.
Culture[]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/A_dancing_girl%2C_Changde%2C_Hunan%2C_China%2C_ca.1900-1919_%28IMP-YDS-RG008-358-0008-0015%29.jpg/170px-A_dancing_girl%2C_Changde%2C_Hunan%2C_China%2C_ca.1900-1919_%28IMP-YDS-RG008-358-0008-0015%29.jpg)
Language[]
Xiang is a subdivision of spoken Chinese that originates from Hunan. According to Yang Xiong's Fangyan, people in what is the Xiang River region spoke the Southern Chu language, which is considered to be the ancestor of Xiang Chinese today.[3]
Cuisine[]
Hunan cuisine is very famous of its use of chili peppers and has a history of cooking skills employed in it dating back to the 17th century.[4]
Mao Zedong once told Otto Braun: “The food of the true revolutionary is the red pepper, and he who cannot endure red peppers is also unable to fight.”[5]
Opera[]
Huaguxi is a local form of Chinese opera that is very popular in Hunan province.[6]
History[]
Ancient history[]
Prehistorically, the main inhabitants were the ancient country of Ba, Nanman, Baiyue and other tribes whose languages cannot be studied. During the Warring States period, large numbers of Chu migrated into Hunan. Their language blended with that of the original natives to produce a new dialect Nanchu (Southern Chu).[7] During Qin and Han dynasty, most part of today's Eastern Hunan belonged to Changsha-Xian/Changsha-Guo. According to Yang Xiong's Fangyan, people in this region spoke Southern Chu, which is considered the ancestor of Xiang Chinese today.[8]
19th and 20th centuries[]
Hunanese people are associated with political revolutions in 19th and 20th centuries China.[9] The Xiang Army, commanded Zeng Guofan, was instrumental in defeating the Taiping Rebellion. Hunan-born Huang Xing was the leader of the Wuchang Uprising, the first successful uprising against the Qing dynasty and the first army commander-in-chief of the Republic of China. In the 1920s, locals inspired by Wang Fuzhi, a seventeenth-century scholar who had advocated for "Western" ideas of progress, humanism, and nationalism, created the Hunanese self-government movement, which was championed by Peng Huang and the young Mao Zedong. Three of the "Big Five" original Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China members were from Hunan.
History book[]
(link)'History of Hunanese': the first book on the History of Hunanese, from their own perspective.
Notable people[]
This is a list of people with either full or partial Hunanese ancestry.
- Cai Lun
- Zhou Dunyi
- Wang Fuzhi - Ming loyalist and philosopher.
- Zeng Guofan - leader of the Xiang Army who crushed the Taiping Rebellion.
- Zuo Zongtang
- Qi Baishi - regarded as one of the best Chinese painters in Chinese style.
- Huang Xing - leader of the Wuchang Uprising and the first army commander-in-chief of the Republic of China
- Chen Tianhua - Han nationalist.
- He Long
- Mao Zedong - founder and first Paramount leader of the People's Republic of China.
- Liu Shaoqi - second President of the People's Republic of China.
- Peng Dehuai - considered one of the most successful and highly respected generals in the early Chinese Communist Party.
- Hu Yaobang
- Zhu Rongji
- James Soong - founder and current chairman of the People First Party.
- Peng Shuai
- Liu Wen - model
- Song Jiaoren, anti-Qing Revolutionary
- Lung Ying-tai
- Ma Ying-jeou
- Loretta Yang
References[]
- ^ "Han Chinese, Xiang in China" Joshua Project
- ^ Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Dec 21, 2006 Levinson, David; Christensen, Karen (2002). Encyclopedia of modern Asia, Volume 6. Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 174. ISBN 978-0-684-31247-7. Retrieved February 29, 2012.
XIANG The term "Xiang" refers to the people and the local sublanguage used in Hunan, a province in southeast-central China; Xiang is derived from the older literary name of Hunan. It is estimated that more than 25 million Chinese (most of them living in Hunan
- ^ 袁家骅 (1983). 汉语方言槪要. p. 333. ISBN 9787801264749.
- ^ Distefanoy, Joe. "A Song of Spice and Fire: The Real Deal With Hunan Cuisine".
- ^ Leonard, Andrew (2016-04-14). "Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food". Nautilus. Retrieved 2021-09-12.
- ^ Shi-Zheng Chen (1995). "The Tradition, Reformation, and Innovation of Huaguxi: Hunan Flower Drum Opera". TDR. 39 (1): 129–149.
- ^ Jiang 2006, p. 8.
- ^ 袁家骅 (1983). 汉语方言槪要. p. 333. ISBN 9787801264749.
- ^ Platt, Stephen R. (2007). Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China. Harvard University Press.
History of Hunanese (link)
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hunannese people. |
- Subgroups of the Han Chinese
- People from Hunan