Baiyi de Quzuochong

In any country that was not China, the discovery in the last years of the century twenty, of an indigenous people, formed by scarcely 500 persons, different from all the peoples they surround him, and that practises the only religion, with a series of rites and completely particular cults, would have woken up a scientific fuss without precedents. Teams of anthropologists, historians, linguists, and specialists in the religions, would have flown to his grounds, examining up to the minor details of his life, rites, cults and beliefs. In China, nevertheless not. Perhaps be because China keeps on being the wonderland, and any prodigy can arise in these grounds, without causing the attention of anybody, and much less of the Chinese.

If what in other countries had given place to ink rivers, here scarcely an article deserves, possibly it is because the official politics not to recognize new indigenous villages, but to conceal in possible his existence, not to have to modify the official ethnic scheme, hoping perhaps that these small indigenous peoples should be melt gradually in the big current of the Chinese people.

Well, all right in the year 1984, the ethnologist Lei Changzheng discovered in the center of the province of Yunnan, a community that, descending possibly from the peoples that populated the south of China more than 2.000 years ago, there had preserved a series of linguistic, cultural and religious aspects that were separating them perfectly from any other well-known people. In spite of it, his article happened almost unnoticed. And bad called by his neighbors "Baiyi" who live in the Jianshui district they continue his slow descent towards the negligence and the extinction to which his scarce number of persons has them exposed. So although they had managed to support the inbreeding until 1949, the disorders that shook China from this date, also they affected them, and many of the young people, having gone out on the outside to study, enrolados in the army, or to realize administrative tasks, began marrying the people of other peoples.

According to the report of mister Lei the "Baiyi" they are not recognized by this name, which is only the denomination that his neighbors give them. They do not have a special way of being named themselves, for what not to hurt his sensibility, the author recounts to call them like the Quzuochong people, for the county in which they live. They were only 574 persons. They were distributed in two nearby villages, both placed in the district of Jianshui, in the area of the Qujiang. Nevertheless in spite of not having a way of being named themselves, they are considered to be different from other peoples who live about them: of the Han, I them Fled and the Yi. The government nevertheless, it classified them like part of the above mentioned. But they support a deep ethnic feeling, although his language and his typical life style are on the point of disappearing forever.

It is anticipated that they inhabit these grounds from the first years of the dynasty Ming, this is from the XIVth century approximately. Although possibly he is progeny of called Baiyue who were inhabiting the south of China from prehistoric times. Therefore there would be a lagoon species in the history of the humanity. His language, in fact Dong belongs to the branch dai, and they would prefer to be considered to be themselves Dai, to which they are considered to be more related, that Yi. The investigative only one that has dealt with them, also thinks that his culture is more similar to that of Dai de Yunnan and to that of Buyi de Guizhou.

With the Yi they support big resemblance in the way of dressing, as well as in his weddings. Also they need in some occasions the assistance of the shamans yi, to direct some ceremonies for which they are not provided with religious specialists.

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