Chinese Health Care Essay, Research Paper

Between five and six thousand years ago, the Hmong people lived in today’s Hebei province, said Professors Wu and Yang. Their leader at the time was the legendary Chiyou, and his people were known as the Jiuli tribes. The ancestors of the Han Chinese, ruled by leaders Huang Di and Yan Di, lived to the northwest of the Jiuli Kingdom. As Chinese population grew, they expanded southward into Hmong territory. A major war broke out between the two sides on the northwestern part of modern-day Beijing. Professors Wu and Yang cited that according to legends and folk songs, “the Hmong won nine battles but lost on the tenth.”

After their defeat, the Hmong emigrated southward into the lower reaches of the Yellow River where they re-established a new kingdom approximately four thousand years ago. The San-Miao Kingdom and its people were led by Tao Tie and Huan Tuo. Unfortunately, history repeated itself; the Han Chinese expanded, encroaching and taking over on what had become Hmong land. In the ensuing war the San-Miao Kingdom was defeated and “largely exterminated” by Yu the Great at about 2200 B. C., wrote Jenks. The Hmong then became disintegrated and lived dispersely in China’s south and southwest corners. “After San-Miao,” Professor Wu said, “the Hmong people could never be united again, and be strong as a nation.”

After the destruction of San-Miao, the Hmong continued to migrate southward into today’s Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. Much was talked about their living in the Dongting Lake and Poyang Lake areas, where the Chu Kingdom during the Eastern Zhou and Qin Dynasties encompassed. Many scholars, both Hmong and non-Hmong, argue that the state of Chu was a Hmong kingdom. If it was not Hmong, it certainly was not Chinese. Conrad Schirokauer, a published scholar of Chinese history, referred to the Chu state as a “semi-Chinese.” Many researchers, including our Xiangtan professors, argue that the intact female corpse (died and buried during the Chu Kingdom and excavated from a highly elaborate tomb in 1972 in Changsa, Hunan) was Hmong because the drawings on her caskets and on the piece of silk covering her coffin are designs unique to the Hmong.

Based on the seal unearthed, this female corpse was named Xin Zhui, the wife of Li Cang who was the Marquis of Dai. Even after more than two thousand years, her body was well preserved and protected from decay by a set of four coffins carefully arranged inside one another.

Along with her body, over 1,400 cultural and funerary objects were buried inside the tomb, ranging from agricultural seeds, combs, mittens, stockings, shoes, gowns, wooden dolls, food and wine containers to zither-like stringed and reed-pipe instruments.

On top of the innermost coffin, there laid a splendid and exquisite T-shaped painting on silk. The painting details a person’s three souls – one which remains to watch over the body, the second which goes in search of the ancestors and the third which just wanders. This belief in three separate souls and their duties upon death exist today. Having published a paper on this unique piece of painting, Professor Yang believes this old pictorial lends even greater evidence to the claim that the corpse and the Chu Kingdom could be Hmong. He argued that except for a few minor illustrations on the top left, the rest of the intricate illustrations coincided with legends and folk stories of the Hmong. Pointing to the wooden dolls, a tour guide of the museum mentioned that many visiting scholars argue that they are dressed in Hmong-style clothing.

Throughout history, if the Hmong people found any kind of peace, it never lasted long. They have been forced to emigrate from northeastern China into the country’s southwestern corner. During the Qing Dynasty, several major wars further pushed hundreds of thousands of Hmong into Southeast Asian countries of Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Thailand.

The first major war during the Qing Dynasty erupted in 1735 in southeastern Guizhou province as a result of Chinese southward expansion and forced assimilation. Eight counties and 1,224 villages were said to be involved in this war. When the Hmong were suppressed in 1738, Professor Wu said 17,670 Hmong had been killed in combat, 11,130 were captured and executed and another 13,600 were forced into slavery. Half of the Hmong population were affected by the war.

The second war (1795-1806) was started in three provinces – southeast of Sichuan, east of Guizhou and west of Hunan. The Hmong were led by Ba-yue Wu, Liu-deng Shi, San-bao Shi and Tian-ban Shi. As in the past, this war was launched to resist the Chinese and the Qing government from taking over their land. The popular slogan at the time was, “Get back our fields. Drive the Han people and he Manchus out off our fields.”

The last war was the biggest and longest of the three. As a result of the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing government demanded more taxes and labor from the Hmong. The Hmong, led by Xiu-mei Zhang and other leaders, revolted in southeastern Guizhou in 1854 and fought until 1873. In excess of one million people were involved in this war, which spread to cover hundreds of cities and counties. According to Professor Wu, only 30 percent of the Hmong survived the war. Seventy percent of them were either killed or ran away. Zhang, a native of Taijiang, Guizhou, was captured and taken to Changsa, Hunan where his life r ended under cruel tortures.

While a major portion of the Hmong emigrated to Southeast Asia during periods of the last two wars, hundreds of thousands of Hmong were left behind in China. According to the 1990 Chinese census, there are still 7,398,035 Hmong scattered in Chinas southwestern provinces – approximately 3,686,900 in Guizhou province; 1,557,073 in Hunan; 896,712 in Yunnan, 535,923 in Sichuan, 425,137 in Guangxi, 200,702 in Hupei, 52,044 in Hainan Island; and 43,544 in other provinces.

Because of the many years of warfare and assimilation, the Hmong in China have been divided into five main branches – Hong (Red), Hei (Black), Bai (White), Hua (Flowery) and Qing (Green) Hmong. They have also been separated linguistically into three main dialects – eastern, central and western. One group cannot understand the other two’s dialects. Fortunately, all three groups pay respect to the same ancestry, the legendary Chiyou. Legends, folk tales and folk songs are similar in many ways between the three groups. All of the different groups of the Hmong – in and out of China-have continued to practice the so-called showing the way or qhuab ke in Hmong, a funeral song sung to the deceased. Qhuab ke precisely guides the deceased individuals soul from his present location to the original homeland of his ancestors, tracing backward the migration route from village to village, city to city northeast towards the Beijing area. Besides written materials, Hmong scholars have recently used qhuab ke as a major source to help them relearn and interpret Hmong history.

Although their culture and tradition are similar in many ways, a few major cultural practices are different between those in China and those outside China. Unlike the Hmong in and from Southeast Asia, those in China standardize how a person is called. According to our professors and the Hmong-Chinese community, the Hmong traditionally call each other and oneself by the given name first, followed by the family or last name. Unless one is talking to Chinese people (who go by last name followed by first name), or putting down his name on official document, he would never go by the family name first. In short, inside the Hmong-Chinese community, one is always called by the given name first. On the contrary, a minority but growing percentage of Hmong from Southeast Asia prefer to be called by their last name first,