V. Preservation and Development of the Cultures of Ethnic Minorities
China's ethnic minorities have formed their unique cultures in the long
process of historical development. China respects and preserves the
traditional cultures of ethnic minorities, and all of the minority
peoples are free to maintain and develop their own cultures.
Respecting the Folkways and Customs of Minority Peoples
The various ethnic minority groups in China differ widely in their
folkways and customs. They have different modes of production and life
styles, as displayed in dress and adornments, diet, residences, marriage,
etiquette and funerals. The minority peoples have the right to retain or
change their folkways and customs, which are respected by the state. The
government protects such rights in every aspect of social life.
In China, about ten minority peoples have the tradition of eating Muslim
food. Taking this into consideration, the state has established Muslim
canteens or supplies Muslim food in state organs, schools, enterprises
and institutions. In some work units where people eating Muslim food are
few, Muslim canteens are jointly established by several units or Muslim
food is specially prepared. Muslim food and beverage shops can be found
in places where Muslim ethnic minorities live in concentrated
communities. In cities, communication hubs, restaurants, hotels and
hospitals, and on trains, ships and airplanes, Muslim catering is
provided. The state stipulates that ``Muslim food'' must be marked on
beef and mutton sold to ethnic minorities which eat Muslim food at all
the stages of slaughtering, packaging, transporting, processing and
selling. In large and medium-sized cities where there are large numbers
of ethnic minority people who eat Muslim food, the relevant state
departments have established special beef and mutton wholesale
departments or retail shops and given them preferential treatment.
The forms of burial vary among China's ethnic minorities, including
cremation, inhumation, ``water burial'' and ``sky burial'' (exposure
burial). The government respects minority peoples' burial customs, and
has allotted land for cemeteries and established burial services
departments specially for Hui, Uygur and other minority peoples that have
the tradition of inhumation. Throughout the country, cemeteries can be
found in large, medium and small cities where Hui and other minority
peoples preferring inhumation live. The burial custom of Tibetans has
also been respected; they can choose whatever form of burial they
prefer--``sky burial,'' inhumation or ``water burial.''
Ethnic minorities have rich traditions of festivals, including the New
Year and Shoton (Yogurt) Festival of the Tibetan people, the
Fast-breaking and Corban festivals of the Hui and Uygur peoples, the
Nadam Fair of the Mongolian people, the Water Sprinkling Festival of the
Dai people and the Torch Festival of the Yi people. The various ethnic
minority groups in China are free to celebrate their own traditional
festivals, and the state gives them holidays and supplies special food
for the holidays.
Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of Ethnic Minorities
To preserve the traditional cultures of the ethnic minorities, the state
has formulated plans or organized specialists for work involving the
collecting, editing, translating and publishing of their cultural
heritage and the protecting of their famous historical monuments, scenic
spots, rare cultural relics and other important items of the historical
and cultural heritage.
A national planning section and office have been established by the state
to organize the editing and publishing of ancient books of ethnic
minorities. Currently, about 25 provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities, 130 autonomous prefectures, prefectures and leagues and
other minority areas, and some ethnic colleges and schools have
established institutions for the same purpose. By the end of 1998, more
than 120,000 titles of ethnic minorities' ancient books have been
collected, of which, over 110,000 have been edited and 5,000 published.
More than 3,000 experts and scholars organized by the state have finished
the editing and publishing of five series on ethnic minority issues,
including A Brief History of China's Ethnic Minorities, Brief Records of
Ethnic Minorities' Languages, and A General Survey of Autonomous Ethnic
Minority Areas, comprising over 400 titles and 90 million words. Now each
of the 55 minority ethnic groups has a brief written history.
The Chinese government has set up special institutions for the
collection, editing, translation and research of the three major epics of
ethnic minorities: Gesar of the Tibetan, Jianggar of the Mongolians and
Manas of the Kirgiz. The three epics and treatises concerning them have
been published in the appropriate ethnic minority languages, Chinese and
foreign languages. The publishing of the Corpus of Gesar Studies in more
than three million words brought many distinguished Gesar studies experts
to the fore. In recent years, the state has earmarked tens of millions of
yuan for the publishing of Zhonghua Dazang Jing, an encyclopedia of
Tibetan studies in 150 volumes.
Beginning in the early 1950s, governments at various levels and culture
and arts departments have organized tens of thousands of experts in
anthropology, sociology and ethnology, and writers and artists to collect
and preserve traditional folk cultures and arts in regions where minority
peoples live. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Chinese government put
in much capital and efforts into the collection and editing of the folk
cultural and arts materials of the minority peoples. The compilation of
ten collections of literature, music and dance of minority peoples,
comprising 450 volumes in 450 million words, including the Collection of
Chinese Folk Songs, Collection of Folk Instrument Tunes of China's
Ethnic Minorities, Collection of Chinese Folk Tales, and Collection of
Chinese Folk Proverbs have been completed, and 310 volumes have already
been published.
In addition, in the past decade the state has invested a great deal of
capital in maintaining cultural relics and historical sites, including
the Drepung, Sera and Gandan monasteries in the Tibetan capital Lhasa,
the Kumbum Monastery in Qinghai Province and the Kilzil Thousand-Buddha
Cave in Xinjiang. Between 1989 and 1994, the state invested 53 million
yuan and 1,000 kg of gold in repairing the famous Potala Palace in Lhasa.
In addition, museums and cultural centers have been established in
various places for the collection and preservation of cultural relics of
ethnic minorities. Among them, the Tibet Museum cost nearly 100 million
yuan to construct.
Promoting Ethnic Minorities' Cultural and Arts Undertakings
The state and relevant departments devote great efforts to fostering
literary and artistic talent among the minority peoples, and promoting
the creation of literature and art by setting up literature and art
organizations, art institutes and schools, cultural centers and mass art
centers. In the early 1950s, the national-level Central Ethnic Song and
Dance Ensemble was established in Beijing. It is composed of performers
from various ethnic groups, and performs ethnic songs and dances of its
own creation both in China and abroad. To date, in autonomous areas,
there are 534 art troupes, 194 sites for art performances, 661 libraries,
82 mass art centers, 679 cultural centers, 7,318 culture-dissemination
stations and 155 museums. Furthermore, there are 24 art colleges and
secondary-level art schools in the five autonomous regions and Yunnan,
Guizhou and Jilin provinces specially for fostering artistically talented
people among China's ethnic minorities.
The ``Twelve Mukams'' opera, a classical musical treasure of the Uygur
people, which was on the verge of being lost, has been preserved. At the
end of the 1940s, only two or three elderly musicians could sing it
completely. But now it is flourishing, since the Mukam Art Troupe and
Mukam Research Office have been established in Xinjiang. In addition,
Tibetan opera, which has a history of over 500 years, is well preserved
and flourishing. Every year, it is included in the Shoton Festival,
together with other singing, dancing and drama performances.
The state regularly conducts the competition for the ``Peacock Award''
for ethnic minorities' music, dance and drama and the ``Stallion Award''
for films, television programs and literary works dealing with minority
peoples. Beginning in 1992, the state started to carry out the ``Long
Cultural Corridor Construction in the Nation's Border Areas'' projects in
nine autonomous regions and provinces where minority peoples are
concentrated, including Guangxi, Yunnan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia,
Heilongjiang and Jilin. In the past few years, governments at various
levels have also put large amounts of funds into the construction of many
cultural infrastructure facilities, which have improved and enriched the
cultural life of more than ten million ethnic minority people.
In the past decade or more, ethnic minority culture and art troupes have
extended their exchanges with the outside world, and over 100 of them,
national and local, have performed in other countries and regions.
The ranks of ethnic minority writers are continuously growing. A large
number of such writers have come to the fore and created a great number
of literary works. Nearly 600 writers belonging to ethnic minorities are
members of the Chinese Writers' Association, constituting more than 10
percent.
The arts and handicrafts of minority peoples are a splendid legacy. The
mural art of the Tibetans is continuously enriched with contents
depicting the development history of the Tibetan ethnic group and the new
lives of the Tibetan people. The Tibetan art of scroll painting, or
Tangka, is well preserved. The carpets and wall hangings made by the
Uygur and Mongolian peoples are very popular on the Chinese and overseas
markets. The wax-printing art of the Bouyei, Miao, Yao and Gelo ethnic
groups is growing in popularity, with great improvement in designs,
patterns and varieties. And the brocade technique of the Tujia, Zhuang,
Dai, Li and Dong ethnic groups has developed from small-scale family
workshops to today's brocade mills, whose production scale has been on
the increase.
Preserving and Developing the Traditional Medicine of Ethnic Minorities
The state has made great efforts to foster medical specialists for
minority peoples. It has established medical colleges and universities of
Tibetan, Mongolian and Uygur medicine in the Tibet, Inner Mongolia and
Xinjiang autonomous regions, respectively, which have trained 2,531
specialists. Of them, more than 500 have been trained by the Tibet
College of Tibetan Medicine, founded nearly ten years ago. Nowadays,
there are 127 hospitals of ethnic minority medicine all over the country,
of which, 52 are Tibetan medicine hospitals, 41 are Mongolian medicine
hospitals, 26 are Uygur medicine hospitals and eight specialize in the
traditional medicine of other minority groups. Also, the state has
provided active support for the development and application of ethnic
minority traditional medicine. In 1992, the state gave permission for the
setting up of centers for making of Mongolian, Tibetan and Uygur
pharmaceutical preparations. They manufacture more than ten kinds of
pharmaceutical preparations and over 100 kinds of traditional medicines
with the combination of traditional and modern expertise.
Developing the Traditional Sports of Ethnic Minorities
The traditional sports of ethnic minorities originate from the daily life
of the people and are rich in content and form, and have distinct
characteristics and a long history. They call for skill of a high order,
and most of them are accompanied with music, or singing and dancing. They
include horse racing, archery, sheep-chasing on horseback, wrestling,
swinging, springboard jumping, dragon-boat racing and mountaineering.
Physical culture and sports institutions have been established in the
various autonomous areas to train people in ethnic sports, develop
traditional ethnic and modern sports activities and improve the health of
minority peoples. To date, more than 290 kinds of traditional ethnic
sports have been revived. In 1953, the first traditional ethnic sports
show and competition was held in Tianjin, known as the First National
Traditional Ethnic Minority Sports Meet. Beginning in 1982, such meets
have been held every four years, and the sixth one was held in Beijing in
September 1999, with some contests held in Lhasa, the capital of the
Tibet Autonomous Region. Throughout the country, there are 25 provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities that hold traditional ethnic
minority sports meets every four years.
Fifty years of experience has proved that the policies toward ethnic
minorities of the People's Republic of China are successful ones. China
has blazed a correct way for handling ethnic problems and realizing the
common prosperity of the various ethnic groups in conformity with China's
reality. In the meantime, however, the Chinese government is well aware
of the fact that, due to the restrictions and influences of history,
physical geography and other factors, central and western China, where
most ethnic minority people live, lag far behind the eastern coastal
areas in development. In some ethnic minority areas, the people are
inadequately fed and clothed, and while in some other areas sustained
development has been adversely affected by poor production conditions.
The Chinese government attaches great importance to these problems, and
is taking measures to solve them. The Chinese government is convinced
that, as the reform, opening-up and modernization drive develop, the
various ethnic groups of China will develop in a still more rapid and
healthy way, and the relations between ethnic groups marked by equality,
unity and mutual help are certain to be further consolidated and
developed in the coming 21st century.
Notes:
(1) For the population of China's ethnic minorities, see Theory and
Practice of China's Ethnic Problems, compiled by Jiang Ping, Central
Party School Press, 1994, pp.492-496.
(2) For the distribution of China's ethnic minorities, see An Outline of
Ethnic Problems, compiled by Wu Shimin, Sichuan People's Publishing
House, 1997, pp. 383-385.
(3) For the formation of China as a united multi-ethnic country, see ``A
Study of the History of China's Ethnic Groups and Border Areas'' by Dai
Yi and ``Historical Characteristics of Ancient States in China'' by Zhang
Chuanxu in the Eight Persons' Forum on the Historical Problems of China
and Other Countries, Central Party School Press, 1998.
(4) For relevant laws, see A Selection of Laws and Regulations on Ethnic
Policies of the People's Republic of China, China Civil Aviation Press,
1997.
(5) For social conditions of China's ethnic minorities before 1949, see A
Brief Introduction to the Human Rights of China's Ethnic Minorities,
compiled by Yang Houdi, Beijing University Press, 1997.
(6) For social and historical conditions of Tibet before 1959, see Social
and Historical Materials Concerning China's Tibet, China Intercontinental
Press, 1994.
(7) For the distribution of China's autonomous ethnic minority areas, see
An Outline of Ethnic Problems, compiled by Wu Shimin, pp. 386-390.
(8) See the 1998 Statistics Bulletin of the National Economic and Social
Development of the People's Republic of China, Foreign Languages Press,
1999.
(9) See China's The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, compiled by the
Information Office of the People's Government of the Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region, China Intercontinenal Press, 1999.
(10) See The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of China, compiled by the
Information Office of the People's Government of the Ningxia Hui
Autonomous Region, China Intercontinental Press, 1998.
(11) See The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China, compiled by the
Information Office of the People's Government of the Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region, China Intercontinental Press, 1998.
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