Presenting the Manchúes

In China there live at present more than ten million persons considered to be Manchúes. Most of them are in three provinces of the northwest of China (Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang), mixed with the rest of the Chinese population, in such a way that, except in a few villages, the language and the culture machú, they have disappeared practically.

The manchúes have a long history. In fact, it is supposed that his ancestors, the Altaian peoples that finished with giving birth to the Nuzhen, can go living through several thousands of years in the regions placed to the north of China. These nomadic peoples, in two occasions formed powerful confederacies that went so far as to dominate big part or the totality of China. One was in the XIIth century, with the establishment of the dynasty Jin for the Nuzhen in the year 1115 and other one was in the XVIIth, with the establishment of the dynasty Qing for the manchúes. Nuzhen de facto and manchúes are almost equivalent names.

This dynasty Qing, the last one that dominated China, practised from the moment of his foundation an ethnic stratification that it was placing to them over the Chinese. That did not prevent the manchúes from being impregnated little by little with the Chinese culture, not that many of the customs manchúes were becoming fashionable between the Chinese. The qipao and other pledges considered Occident like the traditional suit of the Chinese women, are, in fact, the suit of the manchúes.

The ethnic separation was supported with special intensity between the elites that were holding the power. Nevertheless, the attempts of the emperors for supporting free from the Chinese immigration the provinces of Manchuria, they failed noisily when, from the XIXth century, the increasing poverty of the Chinese peasants, it pushed millions of them to emigrate to the relatively empty ancestral grounds of the manchúes.

The language of the manchúes belongs to the branch Man-Tungus of the family of Altaian languages. At present only one speaks in a few villages of the province of Heilongjiang. The manchúes had a written language, at present a dead language, developed in the year 1599 from the writing mongola. This writing is not already used, but it is very important for the investigations on the last Chinese dynasty, since of the dynasty Qing, established by the manchúes, numerous documents written with these characters stay. In fact, any traveler who visits Beijing has opportunity to know this writing, since most of the rooms of the Prohibited City, they have his name written above in Chinese and in manchú.

Copyright © 2004 www.wuhancom.net