Peoples and Languages of China

01Read the Second Line on the Sign

How many peoples does China have, and where do the smaller ones 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.

One 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. Another is 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, is spoken by about four in five people, 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 a visitor may need 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 use as a base.

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), a county 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 larger peoples are not the well-known 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) is spoken by about four in five people, up sharply over two decades, which means almost everyone under fifty and fewer of the very old. English is not counted by the census; the practical answer is in block 04.

And the whole. About 1.4 billion people, a number that has begun to decline, second in the world after India. About two in three live in cities.

04What It Changes for a Trip

Can a visitor travel in China without Chinese, and which regions have special rules?

Language leads, because it is a question visitors ask often. 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, service counters, bus drivers and anyone over sixty are not. The gap is bridged by the phone: install a translator before flying and download its offline Chinese pack, because the camera mode reads a menu and the conversation mode gets a visitor through a pharmacy. And use the characters this site prints after every place and dish. Pinyin (拼音) is for the visitor to say; the characters are for the local reader. A driver cannot read Wuyishan (武夷山). He can read the three characters after it.

Dialects change what is heard, not what can be done. 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 a visitor, so a Mandarin phrasebook is never wasted. In the regions of the smaller peoples the same is true of the local language: the shopkeeper in Kashgar (喀什) speaks Uyghur (维吾尔族) at home and Putonghua to visitors.

On the edges, the rules change. The Tibet (西藏) Autonomous Region has its own arrangements for foreign visitors. The Tibetan areas of Sichuan (四川), Gansu (甘肃), Qinghai (青海) and Yunnan (云南) are approached as ordinary destinations, which is why Kangding (康定), Xiahe (夏河) and Shangri-La (香格里拉) appear on so many itineraries. Border counties, Tashkurgan (塔什库尔干) among them, can carry local rules. Every card on this site carries a banner at the top where a restriction applies, and the banner is worth reading before a week is planned around a place. The how-it-works page covers general procedures.

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 photographing 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 a 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 known for was a Hui invention.

05Where It Is Met

Where on PreeChina can a visitor go deeper into the regions of China's smaller peoples?

This page is the map; the rooms are on other pages. Where each edge turns into somewhere to walk into:

The lanes. The old-towns page has a block on living quarters of the smaller peoples, 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 in their literal form: 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 says 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 visitors often 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 a visitor will show to someone.
• Not people in costume. The fifty-five smaller peoples are 125 million people, many 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 just Tibet (西藏) and Xinjiang (新疆). The Zhuang (壮族) of Guangxi (广西), nearly twenty million people, outnumber every other smaller people, and the Hui (回族) and the Miao (苗族) are among the next, though many visitors could place neither 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 a visitor 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.