THE BUYI: THE BEST BUILDERS

The Buyi are one of the most numerous minorities of China. Nevertheless, in spite of his number, his interesting culture and of having preserved it largely until our days, it is one of the most unknown minorities, whose complex way of understanding the world seems to have happened unnoticed for anthropologists, travelers and onlookers.

Nevertheless, his villages are of more interesting that they can be in China, since the Buyi belong to the best craftsmen of the stone in this country. All the houses are of stone elegantly cut, forming a splendid, harmonic and original set.

His mastery reached in the work of the stone has a certain religious component. Since the Buyi have a few deep beliefs connected with the myths of his ancient culture, neither that nor the arrival of the Buddhism and the Taoism, not later of the Christianity, has managed to exile. His deep piety is transmitted to all the facets of his existence.

The Buyi are named if the same in several different ways: Buyi, Buyayi, Buzhong, Burao, Buman, etc.

This can be only a cause of the dialectal varieties of his language or of finding us before several peoples closely related at linguistic and cultural level, which have been included under the denomination "Buyi".

The Buyi are 2.971.500 inhabitants, according to the census of the year 2000.
In the year 1990 there were 2.545.792, and in 1982, 2.120.469 inhabitants.

They live principally in the part suroriental of the Guizhou province, with a few families living in Yunnan, and even less in Sichuan. Generally they have like neighbors the Miao.

The Buyi have the following autonomous administrative entities:
Autonomous prefecture Buyi and Miao de Qiannan.
To the south of Guizhou, with a surface of 26.000 km2, and a population (in 1990) of 2.950.000 inhabitants, of whom 909.000 are Buyi and 330.000 Miao.

Autonomous prefecture Buyi and Miao de Qianxinan.
To the Guizhou south-west, with a surface of 16.000 km2, and a population (in 1990) of 2.166.000 inhabitants, of whom 638.000 are Buyi and 105.000 Miao.

Autonomous county Buyi and Miao de Zhenning.
To the south of Anshun, with a surface of 1718 km2, and a population (in 1990) of 268.000 inhabitants, of whom 110.000 are Buyi and 26.000 Miao.

Autonomous county Buyi and Miao de Guanling.
To the Anshun south-west, with a surface of 1473 km2, and a population (in 1990) of 243.000 inhabitants, of whom 52.000 are Buyi and 22.000 Miao.

The language Buyi belongs to the family but Tibetan, subfamily zhuang-dong, branch zhuang-dai. His language keeps so many resemblances with the Zhuang that some authors affirm that there are only one people, so called Buyi in Guizhou and Zhuang in Guangxi.
It has three dialects, that of the South of Guizhou (Qiannan), that of the center (Qianzhong) and that of the west (Qianxi).

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