Xibe (锡伯族)

Geography and Language of Xibe (锡伯族)

The Xibe people live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Their language belongs to the Manchu-Tungusic branch of the Altaic family and is similar to the languages of the Hans and Manchus. It is believed the Xibe people once had their own written script which was lost after the foundation of the Qing dynasty. Some Xibe people use both Manchu and Han and a new script was formed in 1947.

• Population: 188,824
• Distribution:  Xinjiang, Jilin and Liaoning
• Language: Xibe
• Religion: Polytheism, Shamanism, Buddhism

Religion of Xibe (锡伯族)

Before the founding of the PRC, the Xibe people were polytheists, worshipping gods of dragons, insects, land and even smallpox, as well as protectors of animals and homes. Sacrifices of fish every March and melons every July are offered to the ancestors.

Traditions of Xibe (锡伯族)

Staple foods are rice and flour; people who raise sheep and cattle like milk tea, butter and dairy products, including cheese. Flour or bean sauce is made on the 18th of April on the lunar calendar, marking the end of their ancestors’ successful migration west. Cabbage, celery and hot pepper, among other things, are pickled in autumn; fish is cured for the winter and, when farming is slow, Xibe people go fishing and hunting. Archery and horse riding are favourite sports.

Each Xibe village comprises one or two hundred households and is enclosed by a wall. Houses usually have three to five rooms with courtyards for growing fruit trees and flowers.

Families formerly consisted of around three generations and sometimes four or five. Marriage was generally arranged by parents and women had very low status. Sons could not live separately until their father died and everyone in the family lived according to their rank.

History of Xibe (锡伯族)

The Xibes are believed to descend from Xianbei people, a branch of the ancient Donghu group who were nomads. The Xianbeis moved and set up political regimes in the Yellow River Valley, but some stayed where they were and it was these people who were probably the Xibes’ ancestors. Various Xibe tribes submitted to Manchu rule between the 16th and 17th centuries and, in the early Qing dynasty, Xibe people were removed from their native homes and placed as far away as Xinjiang and Yunnan provinces. In the middle of the 1700s, the Qing government sent Xibes and other ethnic groups to Xinjiang from northwest China for a sixty-year garrisoning assignment and this is how come Xibe people live so far apart.

Fishing and hunting skills were passed down the generations for centuries and social organisations had shifted by the mid-sixteenth century to geographical relationships from blood relationships.Blood group links through the paternal lines loosened and there were many different family names in each village.

Modern Times of Xibe (锡伯族)

In 1802, after years of hard work, the Xibe people finished cutting an irrigation channel, drawing water from the Ili River, and several communities settled alongside it. More channels were cut in the 1870s. A feudal society, however, deprived the Xibes of land they had worked

Xibes in northeastern China joined the Hans and Manchus against the Japanese in 1931 and tribes established independent armed forces in the fight against KMT rule.

In 1954, the Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County was established in Ningxi County, Xinjiang. Many social reforms have been carried out, production has increased and small enterprises have been set up. More than ninety per cent of Xibe children now go to school and endemic diseases have been eradicated.The Xibe population is now increasing.