Hunanese people
湖湘民系/湘人/湘語人 Shiōn'nỳ nin
Two Hunannese men counting brass coins in Changde, circa 1900-1919.
Total population
38,149,000[1]
Regions with significant populations
China Mainland ChinaHunan
Northeastern Guangxi
parts of Guizhou
Taiwan Republic of China on TaiwanAs a small part of Mainlander population of Taiwan island
Languages
Xiang Chinese
Mandarin Chinese
Religion
Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese folk religion

The Hunanese people or Xiang-speaking Chinese (Chinese: 湖湘民系; pinyin: Huxiang minxi; Xiang Chinese: 湘語人 Shiōn'nỳ nin) are a Xiang-speaking Han Chinese ethnic subgroup originating from Hunan province in Southern China,[2] but Xiang-speaking people are also found in the adjacent provinces of Guangxi and Guizhou.

Culture

A dancing girl in her pre-Revolutionary costume in Changde, circa 1900-1919.

Language

Xiang is a subdivision of spoken Chinese that originates from Hunan. According to Yang Xiong's Fangyan, people in what is the Xiang River region spoke the Southern Chu language, which is considered to be the ancestor of Xiang Chinese today.[3]

Cuisine

Hunan cuisine is very famous of its use of chili peppers and has a history of cooking skills employed in it dating back to the 17th century.[4]

Mao Zedong once told Otto Braun: “The food of the true revolutionary is the red pepper, and he who cannot endure red peppers is also unable to fight.”[5]

Opera

Huaguxi is a local form of Chinese opera that is very popular in Hunan province.[6]

History

Ancient history

Prehistorically, the main inhabitants were the ancient country of Ba, Nanman, Baiyue and other tribes whose languages cannot be studied. During the Warring States period, large numbers of Chu migrated into Hunan. Their language blended with that of the original natives to produce a new dialect Nanchu (Southern Chu).[7] During Qin and Han dynasty, most part of today's Eastern Hunan belonged to Changsha-Xian/Changsha-Guo. According to Yang Xiong's Fangyan, people in this region spoke Southern Chu, which is considered the ancestor of Xiang Chinese today.[8]

19th and 20th centuries

Hunanese people are associated with political revolutions in 19th and 20th centuries China.[9] The Xiang Army, commanded Zeng Guofan, was instrumental in defeating the Taiping Rebellion. Hunan-born Huang Xing was the leader of the Wuchang Uprising, the first successful uprising against the Qing dynasty and the first army commander-in-chief of the Republic of China. In the 1920s, locals inspired by Wang Fuzhi, a seventeenth-century scholar who had advocated for "Western" ideas of progress, humanism, and nationalism, created the Hunanese self-government movement, which was championed by Peng Huang and the young Mao Zedong. Three of the "Big Five" original Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party members were from Hunan.

Notable people

This is a list of people with either full or partial Hunanese ancestry.

References

  1. ↑ "Han Chinese, Xiang in China" Joshua Project
  2. ↑ Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Dec 21, 2006 Levinson, David; Christensen, Karen (2002). Encyclopedia of modern Asia, Volume 6. Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 174. ISBN 978-0-684-31247-7. Retrieved February 29, 2012. XIANG The term "Xiang" refers to the people and the local sublanguage used in Hunan, a province in southeast-central China; Xiang is derived from the older literary name of Hunan. It is estimated that more than 25 million Chinese (most of them living in Hunan
  3. ↑ 袁家骅 (1983). 汉语方言槪要. p. 333. ISBN 9787801264749.
  4. ↑ Distefanoy, Joe. "A Song of Spice and Fire: The Real Deal With Hunan Cuisine".
  5. ↑ Leonard, Andrew (2016-04-14). "Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food". Nautilus. Archived from the original on 2020-09-23. Retrieved 2021-09-12.
  6. ↑ Shi-Zheng Chen (1995). "The Tradition, Reformation, and Innovation of Huaguxi: Hunan Flower Drum Opera". TDR. 39 (1): 129–149. doi:10.2307/1146407. JSTOR 1146407.
  7. ↑ Jiang, Junfeng (June 2006). Xiāngxiāng fāngyán yǔyīn yánjiū 湘乡方言语音研究 [A Phonological Study of Xiangxiang Dialect] (PhD thesis). Hunan Normal University. p. 8. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  8. ↑ 袁家骅 (1983). 汉语方言槪要. p. 333. ISBN 9787801264749.
  9. ↑ Platt, Stephen R. (2007). Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China. Harvard University Press.

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