Concept
Miao people
Overview
Miao is a word used in modern China to designate a category of ethnic groups living in southern China and Mainland Southeast Asia. The Miao are the largest ethnic minority group in China without an autonomous region. The Miao live primarily in the mountains of southern China encompassing the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Hainan. Some sub-groups of the Miao, most notably the Hmong people, migrated out of China into Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Northern Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand). Following the communist takeover of Laos in 1975, a large group of Hmong refugees resettled in several Western nations, mainly in the United States, France, and Australia.
Miao is a Chinese term referring to many groups that have their own autonyms such as Hmong, Hmu, Xong (Qo-Xiong), and A-Hmao. These people (except those in Hainan) speak Hmongic languages, a subfamily of the Hmong–Mien languages (Miao-Yao) including many mutually unintelligible languages such as the mother tongues of the four primary groups that make up the Miao: Hmong, Hmub, Xong and A-Hmao.
The Miao umbrella group is not strictly defined by language or ethnicity. Not all Miao subgroups are Hmongic speakers, because the Mienic-speaking Kem Di Mun people in Hainan are also designated as the Miao by the Chinese government, although their linguistically and culturally identical fellows in continental China are designated as the Yao. Not all Hmongic speakers belong to the Miao either; for example, the speakers of the Bunu and Bahengic languages are designated as the Yao, and the speakers of the Sheic languages are designated as the She or the Yao.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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They passed through Moldavia and Wallachia, whither their old fellow-countrymen, the Russians, carried their victorious arms in 1769, under the Empress Catherine II. Having crossed the Danube, they settled in part of Dacia and Moesia, giving their name to the countries which are still called Bulgaria. Their dominion extended to Mount Hæmus and the Euxine Sea. In Charlemagne's time, the Emperor Nicephorus, successor…
Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 02
Close in meaning to Miao people; the term itself is not named.
China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous, countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times. It had…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Close in meaning to Miao people; the term itself is not named.
This was Homer's occasion for the story of Ulysses calling up the dead, and from this region the people, anciently called Cimmerii, and afterwards, by an easy change, Cimbri, came into Italy. All this, however, is rather conjecture than an authentic history.
Plutarch, Plutarch
Close in meaning to Miao people; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- French language
- Cantonese
- Atheism
- Kuomintang
- Laos
- Beijing
- Mandarin Chinese
- Myanmar
- Mao Zedong
- Vietnam
- Qing dynasty
- Southeast Asia
- Taoism
- Irreligion
- Vietnamese language
- Vietnam War
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- United States
- Ming dynasty
- Tang dynasty
- Australia
- Guangxi
- Thai language
- Mainland Southeast Asia
Place in the tradition
Part of Pandeism.