Sichuanese people

Sichuanese people
四川人 / 川人 / 川渝人
	The Golden Sun Bird, a rediscovered artifact of the Ba–Shu culture, believed to be a totem of the ancient Shu people, and the emblem of Chengdu since 2011.
Regions with significant populations
Mainland China	Sichuan; Chongqing
Taiwan	As part of Mainlander population
Languages
	Historically Ba–Shu Chinese, also known as Old Sichuanese. ; Presently Sichuanese dialects of Southwestern Mandarin.
Religion
	Traditionally Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese folk religion, but also Christianity (see Christianity in Sichuan) and Islam (see Islam in Sichuan)
Related ethnic groups
	other Han Chinese, Yi people, Tujia people, Qiang people

The Sichuanese people^[a] are a Han Chinese subgroup comprising most of the population of China's Sichuan province and the Chongqing municipality.

History

Sichuanese people in a Taoist religious procession. Reliefs from the Taoist Temple of Saints Erzhu [zh] and Yang Xiong (Temple of West Mountain), Mianyang, 7th–10th century. Photographs by Victor Segalen, mission archéologique en Chine, 1914.

Beginning from the 9th century BC, the Kingdom of Shu (on the Chengdu Plain) and the State of Ba (which had its first capital at Enshi City in Hubei and controlled part of the Han Valley) emerged as cultural and administrative centers where two rival kingdoms were established. In 316 BC, the two kingdoms were destroyed by the State of Qin. After the Qin conquest of the six warring states, the newly formed empire carried out a forced resettlement.^[3] The now-extinct Ba–Shu language was derived from Qin-era settlers and represents the earliest documented division from Middle Chinese.

South Sichuan was also inhabited by the Dai people who formed the serfs class. They were later thoroughly sinicized, adopting the local language of speech. Large numbers of foreign merchant families from Sogdia, Persia and other Central Asian countries immigrated to Sichuan.^[4] A Sogdian temple is attested in Chengdu.^[5]

During the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the population of Sichuan, Chongqing had been reduced due to immigration, deportation and flight of refugees fleeing war and plague, new or returning settlers from modern Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong and Jiangxi, replacing the earlier spoken language with different languages they adopted from the former regions to form a new standard language off communication.^[6]^[7]^[8]

Recent history

Many migrant workers from rural Sichuan have migrated to other parts of the country, where they often face discrimination in employment, housing etc.^[9] This is due to China's household registration policy and other parts of people from midwest China face the same problem.

Culture

The cult for supernatural forces and entities is a long-established tradition among the Sichuanese people, tracing its roots back to the ancient Ba–Shu era. Taoism played a major role since the late antiquity with the emergence of the Way of the Celestial Master movement.^[10] Confucianism had relatively little influence, because of Ba–Shu's remoteness from the Zhongyuan region (perceived as the birthplace of the Chinese civilization) and the Qilu region (birthplace of Confucius and the center of Confucianism).^[11] The cultural characteristics of the Sichuanese people were described in the 2014 book All about Sichuan as "a 'heretical biography' that deviated from Confucian orthodoxy, a free-spirited cultural group that opposed, despised and subverted Confucian ethics and imperial autocracy."^[12]

Language

The Sichuanese once spoke their own variety of spoken Chinese called Ba–Shu Chinese, or Old Sichuanese before it became extinct during the Ming dynasty. Now most of them speak Sichuanese Mandarin. The Minjiang dialects are thought by some linguists to be a bona fide descendant of Old Sichuanese due to many characteristics of Ba–Shu Chinese phonology and vocabulary being found in the dialects,^[13] but there is no conclusive evidence whether Minjiang dialects are derived from Old Sichuanese or Southwestern Mandarin.

Cuisine

Sichuan is well known for its spicy cuisine and use of Sichuan peppers due to its more arid climate.

Notable people

Well known Sichuanese people are such as:

Ba Jin (1904–2005), author and political activist
Bai Ling (1966–), actress
Chang Dai-chien (1899–1983), artist
Zhang Qun (1889–1990), premier of the Republic of China
Fala Chen (1982–), actress
Chen Pokong (1963–), author, political commentator and democracy activist
Chen Shou (233–297), official and writer
Cheung Chung-kiu (1964–), business magnate
Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), revolutionary and paramount leader of China
GAI (1988–), rapper, singer, and songwriter
Guo Moruo (1892–1978), author, poet, historian, archaeologist, and government official
Huang Jiguang (1931–1952), highly decorated soldier during the Korean War
Jiang Zhuyun (1920–1949), revolutionary martyr
Li Bai (701–762), poet
Li Bifeng (1965–), activist, poet and Christian
Li Shou-min, better known as Huanzhulouzhu (1902–1961), novelist of the xianxia fantasy genre
Li Shunxian (c. 900–926), Persian-Sichuanese poet
Liu Yonghao (1952–), businessman
Li Yifeng (1987–), actor and singer
Li Yuchun (1984–), singer, songwriter, and actress
Liao Yiwu (1958–), author, reporter, musician, poet, and critic of China's Communist regime
Luo Ruiqing (1906–1978), army officer and politician
Empress Dowager Ma (Southern Ming) (1578–1669), birth mother of the Yongli Emperor, a convert to Roman Catholicism
Sanyu (painter) (1901–1966)
Song Cheng-tsi (1892–1955), Anglican bishop
Song Yonghua (1964–), scholar
Su Shi (1037–1101), writer, poet, painter, calligrapher, pharmacologist, gastronome, and statesman
Su Xun (1009–1066), writer
Su Zhe (1039–1112), politician and essayist
Tan Weiwei (1982–), singer and actress
Tang Chun-i (1909–1978), philosopher and scholar
Wang Jiujiang (1957–), painter
Wang Jianlin (1954–), business magnate, investor, and philanthropist
Wang Xiaoya (1968–), television host and media personality
Wang Yi (1973–), Calvinist pastor and human rights advocate
Xu Youyu (1947–), scholar
Stephen Yang (1911–2007), surgeon, medical educator, and Quaker peace activist
Yang Xiong (53 BC – 18 AD), poet, philosopher, and politician
Y. C. James Yen (1890/1893–1990), educator
Lucy Yi Zhenmei (1815–1862), Roman Catholic saint
Yu Jie (1973–), Calvinist democracy activist
Yue Yiqin (1914–1937), flying ace
Zhang Lan (1872–1955), political activist
Zhang Yong (1969/1970–), Singapore's richest man in 2019
Zhao Yiman (1905–1936), resistance fighter
Zheng Ji (1900–2010), nutritionist and pioneering biochemist
Zhu De (1886–1976), ex-warlord, later revolutionary and father of the People's Liberation Army
Zhuo Wenjun (fl. 2nd century BC), poet
Zou Rong (1885–1905), revolutionary martyr

Notes

^ Chinese: 四川人; pinyin: Sìchuān rén or 川渝人; Chuānyú rén, sometimes shortened to 川人; Sichuanese Pinyin: Si⁴cuan¹ren²; former romanization: Szechwanese people

References

^ Li, Hsing-jung; Fêng, Ming-i; Yü, Chih-yung (1 November 2014). 導遊實訓課程 (in Chinese (Taiwan)). Taipei: E-culture. p. 331. ISBN 9789865650346.
^ Agafonov, Arthur; Rasskazova, Elena (2 June 2019). "Homeland of Pepper and Panda: Yin and Yang of the Chinese Hinterland". eastrussia.ru. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
^ Barbieri-Low, Anthony J. (2021). "Coerced Migration and Resettlement in the Qin Imperial Expansion". Journal of Chinese History. 5 (Special Issue 2): 181–202. doi:10.1017/jch.2019.1. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
^ Yao, Chongxin (2011). "中古时期巴蜀地区的粟特人踪迹" [Traces of the Sogdians in Medieval Sichuan]. 中古艺术宗教与西域历史论稿 [Papers on Art, History and Religion of the Western Regions during the Medieval Period] (in Simplified Chinese). Beijing: The Commercial Press. p. 281. ISBN 978-7-100-07691-3.
^ Vaissière, Étienne de la (2005) [2002]. "Chapter Five: In China — The Sogdians in Sichuan and Tibet". Sogdian Traders: A History (PDF). Translated by Ward, James. Leiden: Brill Publishers. p. 145. ISBN 90-04-14252-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 2, 2022.
^ James B. Parsons (1957). "The Culmination of a Chinese Peasant Rebellion: Chang Hsien-chung in Szechwan, 1644–46". The Journal of Asian Studies. 16 (3): 387–400. doi:10.2307/2941233. JSTOR 2941233.
^ Yingcong Dai (2009). The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing. University of Washington Press. pp. 16–. ISBN 978-0-295-98952-5.
^ Entenmann, Robert Eric (1982). Migration and settlement in Sichuan, 1644-1796. Harvard University.
^ Handbook of Chinese Migration: Identity and Wellbeing
^ Yuan, Tingdong (1998). "第七章宗教" [Chapter VII: Religion]. 巴蜀文化志 [Cultural History of Ba–Shu] (in Simplified Chinese). Shanghai: Shanghai People's Press. pp. 241–250. ISBN 7-208-02269-0.
^ "郭沫若与巴蜀文化" [Guo Moruo and Ba–Shu culture]. wxg.org.cn (in Simplified Chinese). Retrieved May 5, 2024.
^ Li, Zhongdong; Tan, Yibo (2014). 天下四川 [All about Sichuan] (in Simplified Chinese). Beijing: China Tourism Press. ISBN 9787503248948.
^ 试论宋代巴蜀方言与现代四川方言的关系》">刘晓南（2009年第8卷第6期），《试论宋代巴蜀方言与现代四川方言的关系——兼谈文献考证的一个重要功用：追寻失落的方言》，语言科学