Peoples and Languages of China: Read the Second Line on the Sign

01Read the Second Line on the Sign

How many ethnic groups does China have, and where do the minorities live?

China counts fifty-six peoples, and fifty-five of them together are nine per cent of the country. That nine per cent is a hundred and twenty-five million people, more than Japan, and they live mostly along the edges: where the map touches Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, where it touches Kazakhstan and Pakistan, where it touches Russia, Mongolia and the two Koreas. Where they live, the law puts their script on the signs. So the quickest way to know which country China's edge resembles is to read the second line on the road sign.

Why the edges look like the neighbours. The borders were drawn across peoples, not around them. The Dai 傣族 of southern Yunnan 云南 belong to the same Tai-speaking family as the Thai and the Lao; the Kazakhs 哈萨克族 of the Ili valley are the Kazakhs of Kazakhstan; the Koreans of Yanbian 延边, in Jilin 吉林, crossed the Tumen river within the last two centuries; the Mongols of China outnumber the whole population of Mongolia. Some thirty of the fifty-five recognised groups live on both sides of a border. A visitor who flies from Xi'an 西安 to Kashgar 喀什 has not left the country, but the script on the sign, the bread in the bakery and the call from the mosque have all changed.

The first counter-example is the Hui 回族. Eleven million Chinese-speaking Muslims, spread through every province, with no script of their own: the sign that marks them is not a second line but a green board reading qingzhen 清真, halal, over a restaurant door. The second is the biggest minority of all, the Zhuang 壮族, nearly twenty million in Guangxi 广西, whose second line on the signs of Nanning 南宁 is written in Latin letters and which almost no visitor notices. The rule is a way in, not a law of nature.

The second line of this page is language. Ninety-one per cent of the country is Han, and the Han do not speak one language either. Putonghua 普通话, the standard, was spoken by about four in five people as of 2020, and under it lie ten dialect groups as far apart from one another as the Romance languages. What holds them together is the writing. A menu in Guangzhou 广州 and a menu in Harbin 哈尔滨 are pronounced differently and read the same, which is why this site prints the characters after every name it expects you to show to someone.

02Edge by Edge

Which parts of China resemble Thailand, Central Asia, Mongolia or Korea, and why?

Start in the south-west and go clockwise. Each edge has a people, a script on the second line, a country it resembles, and a town to base yourself in.

Yunnan 云南's southern edge is Southeast Asia. In Xishuangbanna 西双版纳 and Dehong 德宏, Dai 傣族 country, the temples have the tiered gold roofs of Thailand, the monks wear saffron, the letters on the signs curl like Thai, and the new year is the water-splashing festival 泼水节, 13 to 15 April in the middle of April, the same days as Songkran across the border. Jinghong 景洪 is the town to base in; Mangshi 芒市 has the great gold pagoda; Ruili 瑞丽 sits against the Myanmar border with its jade market. The coffee farms this site writes about elsewhere are in the same hills.

Xinjiang 新疆's western edge is Central Asia, in three languages. Kashgar 喀什, Hotan 和田, Kuqa 库车 and Turpan 吐鲁番 are Uyghur 维吾尔族: a Turkic language written in Arabic letters, naan 馕 ovens on the street, a Sunday livestock market, the square in front of the Id Kah 艾提尕尔清真寺 mosque. North of the Tianshan, in the Ili valley around Yining 伊宁, Tekes 特克斯 and the Nalati 那拉提 grassland, and up in Tacheng 塔城 and Altay 阿勒泰, the second line is Kazakh 哈萨克族, yurts stand on the summer pasture, and fermented mare's milk is a drink. At the far end of the Karakoram highway, Tashkurgan 塔什库尔干 is Tajik 塔吉克族, the only county in China whose people speak an Iranian language, with a stone fort above the town. In the Altay mountains the log villages of Hemu 禾木 and Kanas 喀纳斯 belong to the Tuvans 图瓦人, counted as Mongols and speaking a Turkic tongue. Tacheng holds one of the country's two small Russian communities.

The northern edge is Mongolia and Russia. Every sign in Inner Mongolia 内蒙古 carries the vertical Mongolian script, which Mongolia itself gave up for Cyrillic in the 1940s, so visitors from Ulaanbaatar come here to see their own old writing over shop doors. Hulunbuir 呼伦贝尔 has the grassland, the Naadam 那达慕, July or August games in July, and, on the Russian border at Ergun 额尔古纳, the log villages of the other Russian community, blue-eyed and holding Chinese passports.

The north-east edge is Korea. In Yanbian 延边, in Jilin 吉林, the prefecture's rules put Korean above Chinese on every sign; Yanji 延吉 is a Korean city with Chinese number plates and cold noodles, and Hunchun 珲春 looks across one river at both Russia and North Korea 朝鲜. Dandong 丹东, downstream on the Yalu 鸭绿江, is the window on the other Korea.

The plateau is Tibetan, and it is wider than Tibet 西藏. Of seven million Tibetans, fewer than half live in the Tibet Autonomous Region; the rest are in western Sichuan 四川 around Kangding 康定, in southern Gansu 甘肃 around the Labrang 拉卜楞寺 monastery at Xiahe 夏河, across Qinghai 青海, and in Yunnan's Shangri-La 香格里拉 county. The script, the prayer flags and the clockwise circuits are the same everywhere; what differs is the paperwork, which block 04 explains.

The south is the mosaic. Guangxi 广西 is Zhuang 壮族. Guizhou 贵州 is Miao 苗族 and Dong 侗族, with Kaili 凯里 as the gateway and Zhaoxing 肇兴 as the village with five drum towers 鼓楼. The Dali 大理 plain in Yunnan is Bai 白族, with Xizhou 喜洲 and Weishan; Lijiang 丽江 is Naxi 纳西族, whose Dongba script is the last pictographic writing still used in ceremony; Xichang 西昌 and the Liangshan mountains of Sichuan are Yi, with a syllabary of their own and a torch festival 火把节, late July or August in late July or August; Taoping 桃坪羌寨 is Qiang 羌族, a fortress village with watchtowers two thousand years old.

03By the Numbers

What does the 2020 census say about China's peoples and languages?

The census China took in 2020 is the source for every population figure below, and the figures are as of that year. The table under this block carries the source and the year beside each number; the prose says what the numbers change.

Fifty-six, ninety-one, nine. Fifty-six recognised groups. Han, 1.29 billion, 91.1 per cent. Fifty-five others, 125 million, 8.9 per cent. Five autonomous regions, thirty autonomous prefectures, a hundred and twenty autonomous counties: together about two thirds of the land and a small fraction of the people, which is the geographic fact behind this whole page. A trip that stays on the Beijing, Xi'an 西安 and Shanghai line will meet the ninety-one per cent and almost none of the nine.

The big minorities are not the famous ones. Zhuang 壮族 19.6 million; Uyghur 维吾尔族 11.8; Hui 回族 11.4; Miao 苗族 11.1; Manchu 满族 10.4; Yi 彝族 9.8; Tujia 土家族 9.6; Tibetan 7.1; Mongol 6.3. The Manchu, who ruled the country for the last 268 years of the empire, have almost no speakers of their language left. The peoples visitors cross the world to see, the Dai 傣族 and the Kazakhs 哈萨克族, are 1.3 and 1.6 million.

The small ones are the edges. Koreans, 1.7 million, mostly in Jilin 吉林. Tajiks, 51,000, in one county. Russians, 16,000, in two places.

Language. More than 130 languages are spoken in the country; Chinese itself has ten dialect groups; Putonghua 普通话 was spoken by 80.7 per cent as of 2020, up from about 53 per cent in a 2004 survey, which means almost everyone under fifty and a minority of the very old. English is not counted by the census; the practical answer is in block 04.

And the whole. 1.41 billion people as of 2024, falling since 2022, second to India since 2023. Two in three live in cities.

04What It Changes for Your Trip

Can you travel in China without Chinese, and which regions need a permit?

Language first, because it is what first-timers ask about most. In the trip-planning threads this site reads, language comes up in about four in ten, more than any other single worry, and the people who have been are unanimous that a trip with no Chinese is workable. Here is where it is and is not.

Where English works, and where it does not. Airports, high-speed trains and metros are signed and announced in English. Big hotels have an English speaker at the desk. Museum captions are usually bilingual. Taxi drivers, small restaurants, ticket windows, bus drivers and anyone over sixty are not. The gap is bridged by the phone: install a translator before you fly and download its offline Chinese pack, because the camera mode reads a menu and the conversation mode gets you through a pharmacy. And use the characters this site prints after every place and dish. Pinyin 拼音 is for you to say; the characters are for them to read. A driver cannot read Wuyishan 武夷山. He can read the three characters after it.

Dialects change what you hear, not what you can do. In Guangzhou 广州, Hong Kong and Macau the street speaks Cantonese; in Shanghai older people speak Shanghainese; in southern Fujian 福建, Minnan. Everyone under about sixty was schooled in Putonghua 普通话 and will switch to it for you, so a Mandarin phrasebook is never wasted. In the minority regions the same is true of the minority language: the shopkeeper in Kashgar 喀什 speaks Uyghur 维吾尔族 at home and Putonghua to you.

On the edges, the paperwork changes. The Tibet 西藏 Autonomous Region requires foreign visitors to hold a travel permit issued through a licensed agency and to travel with a guide, and has for decades. The Tibetan areas of Sichuan 四川, Gansu 甘肃, Qinghai 青海 and Yunnan 云南 need no permit, which is why Kangding 康定, Xiahe 夏河 and Shangri-La 香格里拉 appear on so many itineraries. Xinjiang 新疆 needs no permit, but expect identity checks at stations and on the roads, and hotels that are not licensed to take foreigners; border counties, Tashkurgan 塔什库尔干 among them, can need a pass arranged on the spot. Every card on this site carries a banner at the top where a restriction applies. Read it before you plan a week around a place. The how-it-works page has the current procedures; this page only tells you that the rule exists.

Timing. The edges run on their own calendars: water-splashing in Xishuangbanna 西双版纳 in the middle of April, Naadam 那达慕, July or August on the Hulunbuir 呼伦贝尔 grassland in July, the Yi 彝族 torch festival 火把节, late July or August around Xichang 西昌 in late July or August, Miao 苗族 festivals through the Guizhou 贵州 autumn and the Miao new year 苗年, November in November. The calendar page keeps the dates, which follow lunar or local reckonings and move each year. The Han holidays matter too, in the other direction: the October week empties the office towers and fills the edges.

Manners. The three rules this site took from its old-towns survey apply to everything on this page: do not stage a photograph, do not disturb worship, ask before you photograph a person. In a mosque, shoes off, shoulders and knees covered, stay outside at prayer times. At a monastery or a stupa, walk clockwise. In a village, buy something.

Food. The green qingzhen 清真 sign means halal and hangs in every city with a Hui 回族 population, which is every city; for a visitor who does not eat pork it is the most useful word on this page. Dai 傣族 cooking will taste like northern Thailand, Uyghur cooking like Uzbekistan, Yanbian 延边 like Korea, and the beef noodle soup that Lanzhou 兰州 is famous for was a Hui invention.

05Where You’ll Meet It

Where on PreeChina can you go deeper into China's minority regions?

This page is the map; the rooms are on other pages. Where each edge turns into something you can walk into:

The lanes. The old-towns page has a block on living minority quarters, the ones with families in the houses rather than costumes on a timetable: the Barkhor 八廓街 in Lhasa 拉萨, the old cities of Kashgar 喀什 and Kuqa 库车, Linxia 临夏's eight quarters and thirteen lanes, the eight hundred morning-tea houses of Wuzhong 吴忠 in Ningxia 宁夏, Niujie 牛街 in Beijing, Zhaoxing 肇兴, Taoping 桃坪羌寨, Xizhou 喜洲 and Weishan 巍山, and Xijiang 西江千户苗寨 with its warning about where the six thousand residents actually live. It also carries the three rules of conduct this page repeats.

The three Buddhisms. The temples page explains why the same religion looks like three on the ground, Han in the east, Tibetan on the plateau, Theravada in Xishuangbanna 西双版纳, and where the mosques of the Hui 回族 and the Uyghur 维吾尔族 belong in the picture.

The stage and the circle. The shows page has the Dong 侗族 grand chorus 侗族大歌 of Zhaoxing and the Tibetan and Mongolian performances; the leisure page is about the other thing that happens, being pulled off the bench into a circle dance 锅庄, and why that is a different page.

The markets. The markets page has Kashgar's Sunday livestock market and the border markets that are the edges at their most literal: Ruili 瑞丽 on the Myanmar line, Dongxing 东兴 in Guangxi 广西 on the Vietnamese, Manzhouli 满洲里 on the Russian, Hunchun 珲春 and Horgos 霍尔果斯.

The food. The noodles page tells you that the beef noodle soup of Lanzhou 兰州 is Hui, and what laghman is. The coffee page puts Yunnan 云南's farms in Dai 傣族 and Jingpo 景颇族 country. The cuisine page draws the wheat-and-rice line that the Han themselves divide along.

The land. Kanas 喀纳斯 and Hemu 禾木, the Nalati 那拉提 grassland, Hulunbuir 呼伦贝尔, the Xishuangbanna rainforest: the edges are also the landscapes, and the outdoors pages take them from here.

The cities. Twelve destination cards open from this page: Jinghong 景洪, Kashgar, Yining 伊宁, Yanji 延吉, Xiahe 夏河, Kangding 康定, Shangri-La 香格里拉, Dali 大理, Lijiang 丽江, Kaili 凯里, Hohhot 呼和浩特 and Lhasa.

06What It’s Not

What do first-time visitors get wrong about China's peoples and languages?

• Not one language. Chinese is a family. Putonghua 普通话 is the standard taught in school; Cantonese 广东, Shanghainese, Minnan and the rest are not accents of it but separate spoken languages that share a script. The census counts more than 130 languages in the country before it gets to dialects.
• Not "characters equal Mandarin". The writing belongs to all the dialects at once. A Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker cannot talk to each other and read the same menu; that is the reason this site prints characters rather than pinyin for anything you will show to someone.
• Not people in costume. The fifty-five minorities are 125 million people, most of them in jeans, running shops and driving trucks. Costume appears on festival days and in the villages built to perform, which the old-towns page labels as such.
• Not only Tibet 西藏 and Xinjiang 新疆. The largest minority is the Zhuang 壮族 of Guangxi 广西, nearly twenty million people, and the second and third by size after the Uyghur 维吾尔族 are the Hui 回族 and the Miao 苗族, neither of whom most visitors could place on a map.
• Not confined to Tibet. Fewer than half of China's Tibetans live in the Tibet Autonomous Region; the monasteries and prayer flags of Sichuan 四川, Gansu 甘肃, Qinghai 青海 and Yunnan 云南 are the same culture without the permit.
• Not the same people. The Hui are Chinese-speaking Muslims found in every province; the Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking people of Xinjiang. They share a religion and a halal sign and almost nothing else, including language.
• Not English. Pinyin 拼音 is a romanisation for Chinese speakers and learners: Beijing is said "bay-jing", Xi'an 西安 has two syllables, and the letters q, x and zh do not sound as they look. It is on the signs to help you say a name, not to help a local read it.
• Not "old China". Traditional characters are the everyday script of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan today, and of every shop sign that wants to look established on the mainland. The simplified set the mainland adopted in the 1950s and 1960s is the same language written with fewer strokes.