Manchu Manju 滿族/满族 Nurhaci • Hong Taiji • Kangxi Emperor • Yongzheng Emperor Qianlong Emperor • Empress Dowager Cixi • Guangxu Emperor • Puyi Dorgon • Heshen • Yixin • Pujie Lao She • John Fugh • Rosamund Kwan • Lang Lang Total population 10,700,000 0.15% of global human population (estimate) Regions with significant populations Ethnic Minority  China 10,682,263[1] ↳ Hong Kong N/A ↳ Macau N/A  Taiwan 12,000[2] Languages Standard Chinese • Manchu Religion Shamanism • Buddhism • Chinese folk religion • Christianity mainly Atheists or Agnostics nowadays[3] Related ethnic groups Evenks • Nanai • Oroqen • Udege • Sibe and other Tungusic peoples This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

The Manchus (Manchu: Manju; simplified Chinese: 满族; traditional Chinese: 滿族; pinyin: Mǎnzú) are an ethnic minority of China who originated in Manchuria (northeastern China).

For centuries, the Manchu ethnicity has acculturated with the majority Han ethnicity of China. Most Manchu today speak Standard Chinese, while the Manchu language is only spoken by elderly people in remote northeastern China and a few scholars; there are around ten thousand speakers of Xibe, a closely related language spoken in the Ili region of Xinjiang. In recent years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in Manchu culture among both ethnic Manchus and Han.^[4] The number of Chinese today with some Manchu ancestry is quite large—with 10.68 million members (in China), Manchu is the 3rd largest ethnic group in China after the Han and the Zhuang.^[5] The adoption of favorable policies towards ethnic minorities (such as preferential university admission, government employment opportunities and exemption from the one child policy) has encouraged some people with mixed Han and Manchu ancestry to re-identify themselves as Manchu.

During their rise in the 17th century, with the help of the Ming dynasty rebels (such as general Wu Sangui), they came to power in China and Manchu clan Aisin Gioro founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which established a republican government in its place.

Culture[link]

A Manchu man hunting, from a Qing era painting.

Aspects of Manchu customs and traditions can be seen in local cuisines, language and customs in Northeast China as well as cities in that region. After having conquered the Ming Dynasty, the Manchus began to adopt many Han customs and traditions to effectively rule China.^{[citation needed]}

They traditionally coiled their hair in high tufts on top of their heads and wore earrings, long gowns and embroidered shoes. The women with higher social standing wore silk and satin clothing while cotton clothing was worn by women of lower social standing. Variants of such costumes (including qi pao and ma gua, Mandarin dress) are still popular throughout China. The cheongsam is a modern adaptation of aristocratic Manchu female dress. Men's clothing formerly consisted of a short, tailored "horse-jacket" worn over a long belted gown to facilitate an equine lifestyle.

The traditional Manchu dwellings were made up of three quarters. In the center of the house was the kitchen while the wings contained the dormitory and the living room. The unique Manchu tradition did not allow people to die on nahan (20px) to the west or north. Believing that doors were made for living souls, the Manchus allowed dead bodies to be taken out only through windows and ground burial was the general practice.^[6]

The Tale of the Nisan Shaman is an important piece of Manchu folklore.^[7]

It was reported in anthropology studies—such as by Weston La Barre, Jeffrey Henderson, and others—that Manchu mothers used to show affection for their children by performing fellatio on their male babies, placing its penis in their mouths and stimulating it, since it was not considered a sexual act, while the Manchu regarded public kissing with revulsion, which was considered sexual.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} They were also reported to caress their children's sexual organs, tickling those of their daughters.^[13]

Manchu girls were reported to be independent and equal to male siblings, having more rights than Chinese girls.^[14] Manchu women were said to be aggressive and irritable, Mongol and Chinese Bannermen married to them were reported to be scared of them, complaining to the Emperor, who permitted them to protest out loud to their wives rather than hide.^[15][16][17]

During the Qing dynasty, education was discouraged by Manchu women. Many of the princesses could not read the simplest book nor write a letter to a friend, but depended upon educated eunuchs to perform these services for them. The Chinese woman on the contrary could usually read and write with ease, and the education of some of them was equal to that of a Hanlin.^[18] However many of these Manchu women of noble background seldom mingled with educated Chinese women even if their husbands were of equal rank in court.

History[link]

Origins and early history[link]

One of the earliest ancestors of the Manchu can trace back to the ancient Sushen tribes.^[19] They were followed by the Yilou people, who were active from AD 202 to 220. The Wuji followed in the 5th century and the tribes of the Mohe in the 6th century. One of the tribes of the Mohe, the Heishui (Amur River) tribe, eventually became the ancestors of the Jurchens, from whom the Manchu originated.^[20]

The Jurchens under the Wanyan clan established the Jin Dynasty (literally Golden Dynasty) that ruled the northern half of China (1115–1234) and rivaled the Song Dynasty in southern China. The Jin were conquered by the Mongols under Genghis Khan.

Another theory is that the Manchu people stem their roots from the Merkit people, a native Mongolic tribal people from the Mongolian plateau in the 12th century.

Before the 17th century, the ancestors of the Manchus were generally a pastoral people, hunting, fishing and engaging in limited agriculture and pig-farming.

A depiction of three peoples of the Siberia. The Manchu man in the middle is dressed in traditional clothes and soncoho.

One of the old traditions of Manchu is the system of bondservants, booi aha or just booi, translated into Mandarin as nucai. The Jurchen tribes employed booi as early as the 15th century, and it was common practice for Manchu military commanders to have their field and house bondservants serving in booi units during military campaigns. The booi differ from Chinese bond slavery in a few key ways, and are somewhat akin to the European feudal liege-bondsman relation. Firstly, booi status is hereditary, similar to a social caste. However, booi were not viewed as properties (although sales of bondservants did occur). Thirdly, booi is more a matter of rank and heredity rather than profession or social status. Indeed, many booi were richly rewarded by their bondmasters, and amassed great wealth and power. Booi status to the imperial Aisin Gioro clan was very prestigious, and they retained the privillege to call themselves "nucai" (slave) when addressing their Aisin Gioro lords. In 1673 the killing of a 'booi's slaves to accompany their dead master to the grave was outlawed.

Founding of the Qing Dynasty[link]

A depiction of two Jurchen warriors and their horses.

A depiction of a Manchu hunting party.

Plaque at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, in both Chinese (left) and Manchu (right)

In 1616, Nurhaci broke away from the power of the decaying Ming Dynasty and established the Later Jin Dynasty (後金 Hòu Jīn)/Amaga Aisin Gurun (), domestically called the State of Manchu (manju gurun) (15px), and unified Manchu tribes, establishing (or at least expanding) the Manchu Banner system, a military structure which made their forces quite resilient in the face of superior Ming Dynasty numbers in the field. Nurhaci later conquered Mukden (modern-day Shenyang) and built it into the new capital in 1621.

In 1636 Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji, reorganized the Manchus, including those other groups (such as Hans and Mongols) who had joined them, changed the nation's name to Qing Empire, and formally changed the name of the ethnic designation to Manchu, outlawing use of the name Jurchen. According to legend, the name was chosen because Hong Taiji's father, Nurhaci, had believed himself to be a reincarnation of the bodhisattva Manjusri. The actual etymology of the name Manchu is debated. The alleged connection to Manjusri faces alternative theories, one of which links the name to the Tungusic word *mangu(n) "river".^{[citation needed]}

When Beijing was captured by Li Zicheng's peasant rebels in 1644, the last Ming Emperor Chongzhen committed suicide. The Manchu then allied with Ming Dynasty general Wu Sangui and seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty. Over the next two decades, the Manchu took command of all of China and defended against Russian hostilities in Russian–Manchu border conflicts.

For political purposes, the early Manchu emperors took wives descended from the Mongol Great Khans, so that their descendants (such as the Kangxi Emperor) would also be seen as legitimate heirs of the Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu government made efforts to preserve Manchu culture and language. These efforts were largely unsuccessful in that Manchus gradually adopted the customs and language of the surrounding Han Chinese and, by the 19th century, spoken Manchu was rarely used even in the Imperial court. Written Manchu, however, was still used for the keeping of records and communication between the emperor and the Banner officials until the collapse of the dynasty. The Qing dynasty also maintained a system of dual appointments in which all major imperial offices would have a Manchu and a Han Chinese member. Because of the small number of Manchus, this insured that a large fraction of them would be government officials.

During the Russian Invasion of Northern and Central Manchuria (1900), the Russian Empire annihilated many bannermen as they fought to the death against the Russians, each falling one at a time against a five pronged Russian invasion. The Russians killed many of the Manchus, thousands of them fled south. The Russian Cossacks looted their villages and property and then burnt them to ashes.^[21][22]

Near the end of the Qing Dynasty, Manchus were portrayed as outside colonizers by Chinese nationalists such as Sun Yat-Sen, even though the Republican revolution he brought about was supported by many reform-minded Manchu officials and military officers.^[23] This portrayal dissipated somewhat after the 1911 revolution as the new Republic of China now sought to include Manchus within its national identity.^[24] Until 1924, the government continued to pay stipends to Manchu bannermen; however, many cut their links with their banners and took on Han-style names in shame and to avoid persecution.^[25] The official total of Manchu fell by more than half during this period, as they refused to admit to their ethnicity when asked by government officials or other outsiders.^[26]

Modern history[link]

Manchu ladies in 1900s

In 1931, the Empire of Japan created a puppet state in Northeast China called Manchukuo. The new state was nominally ruled by Emperor Puyi. By this time the population of historical Manchuria was overwhelmingly Han Chinese, so while Manchukuo was intended to be a state for Manchus (though many were murdered by the Japanese), Manchukuo had a majority Han population, largely due to internal immigration from China. Manchukuo was abolished at the end of World War II after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, with its territory incorporated again into China.

A Manchu young man dressed in traditional clothes

The People's Republic of China recognised the Manchu as one of the country's official minorities in 1952.^[27] In the 1953 census, 2.5 million people identified themselves as Manchu.^[28] The Communist government also attempted to improve the treatment of Manchu people; some Manchu people who had hidden their ancestry during the period of KMT rule thus became more comfortable to reveal their ancestry, such as the writer Lao She, who began to include Manchu characters in his fictional works in the 1950s (in contrast to his earlier works which had none).^[29] Between 1982 and 1990, the official count of Manchu people more than doubled from 4,299,159 to 9,821,180, making them China's fastest-growing ethnic minority.^[30] In fact, however, this growth was not due to natural increase, but instead people formerly registered as Han applying for official recognition as Manchu.^[31]

About a half of the Manchu population lives in Liaoning province and about one-fifth in Hebei province. In both of these provinces there are a number of Manchu autonomous counties.

Autonomous Areas designated for Manchus[link]