Hmong people
The Hmong people are an ethnic group from East and Southeast Asia. In China, the Hmong people are classified as a sub-group of the Miao people. The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwestern China and Mainland Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There are also diaspora communities in the United States, Australia, France, and South America.
Etymology
The term Hmong is the English spelling of the Hmong's native name. It is a singular and plural noun. Very little is known about the native Hmong name as it is not mentioned in Chinese historical records, since the Han identified the Hmong as Miao. The meaning of it is debatable and no one is sure of its origin, although it can be traced back to several provinces in China. However, Hmong Americans and Hmong Laotians often associate it with "Free" and/or "Hmoov" ; it serves as a reminder to them of their history of fighting oppression.Before the 1970s, the term Miao or Meo was used in reference to the Hmong. In the 1970s, Dr. Yang Dao, a Hmong American scholar, who at the time was the head of the Human Resource Department of the Ministry of Planning in the Royal Lao Government of Laos, advocated for the term "Hmong" with the support of clan leaders and General Vang Pao. Yang Dao insisted that the terms "Meo" and "Miao" were both unacceptable as his people had always called themselves by the name "Hmong," which he defined as "free men". Surrounding countries began to use the term "Hmong" after the U.S. Department of State used it during Immigration screening in Thailand's Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. In 1994, Pobzeb Vang registered the term "Hmong" with the United Nations, making it the proper term to identify the Hmong people internationally. Soon after, there was a political push from Hmong American politicians and activists to replace the term Miao with the term Hmong in China with little to no success.
Relationship to the Miao
Historical Miao
Historically, the term "Hmong" is not featured in any Chinese text, only the term "Miao". However it is uncertain if all mentions of Miao people referred to the Hmong people. According to Ruey, the way in which Miao was used in Chinese can roughly be divided into three periods: a legendary period from 2300 BC to 200 BC, then a period when the term generally referred to southern barbarians until 1200 AD, and then a modern period during which the Hmong were probably included. Although the term appeared before the Qin dynasty, throughout history Miao was used as a loose and general term by the Han to refer to southern barbarians. Only since the Tang dynasty did more evidence of its association with the Hmong become more apparent. In the 20th century, Western missionaries called the Hmong and Hmao the "Big Flowery Miao" and the "Little Flowery Miao". Another source states that the Green and White Miao were the Hmong, the Flowery Miao were the Hmao, the Black Miao were the Hmu, and the Red Miao were the Xong. According to She Miaojun, the Miao only existed as an exonym in the imagination of outsiders all the way up to the Qing dynasty. It did not refer to any self-defined ethnic group united by either territory or language. Others believe that Miao identity emerged during the rebellions of the 18th and 19th centuries.Miao nationality
Today, the Hmong in China are categorized under the umbrella term Miáo along with three other indigenous cultural groups, which include non-Hmong peoples such as the Hmu and the Xong of southeast Guizhou. The Chinese Miao minority was created in 1949 as part of the ethnic identification project in which members of the ethnic groups that now comprise the Miao umbrella group campaigned for identification under the name Miao—taking advantage of its familiarity and associations of historical political oppression. The push to appropriate Miao as the official name of their minzu nationality received significant contributions from three Miao intellectuals, however none of them were Hmong. The various Miao sub-groups freely identify as Miao or Chinese while reserving their specific ethnonyms for intra-ethnic communication. According to Jacques Lemoine, "Chinese Hmong have the Miao nationality but Hmong ethnicity" because the People's Republic of China doesn't recognize ethnicity.The Miao minority group has been described as extremely heterogeneous. The four main groups classified as Miao in China are the Hmong, Hmao, Hmu, and the Xong. Despite speaking related languages belonging to the Hmongic language group, these four ethnic groups have little in common and their languages are mutually unintelligible. Even the group closest to the Hmong, the Hmao, speak a language that is as different from Hmong as Italian is to French. They diverged significantly as early as a thousand years ago, after which they may have had no relation to each other at all. Without their official classification as the Miao minority after 1949, it is unlikely that they would be able to recognize any affinity with each other. However none of the four groups have obtained official status as distinct minorities in China. Their names are generally unrecognized by the Chinese and are only used as part of the local vernacular language. As a result, only a small portion of the modern Miao people initially identified as Hmong.
The non-equivalence between the Miao and the Hmong was acknowledged in interactions between Hmong refugees and the Miao. The Miao people that Hmong travelers from the West met were highly varied both in their language and cultural practices. When Hmong refugees from France and the US initially made contact with the Miao from China in officially sanctioned visits, they were introduced to the Xong Miao people who were neither Hmong nor spoke the Hmong language. An eyewitness recounts several occasions when a Hmong and a Hmao tried to understand each other's languages without success. They also met an assortment of Miao people who no longer spoke their native language and only knew Chinese. Many of the Miao they met did not share the same traditional clothing, myths, and folktales. Some did not even play the lusheng, a traditional Hmong musical instrument. The visiting Hmong were themselves not from China but Southeast Asia, where their ancestors had migrated over a century ago due to conflicts in the Qing dynasty. Not understanding the differences between the Miao and Hmong, initially some Hmong-Americans did not believe that these were real Miao people, but other ethnic groups. Some thought that the different costumes were the result of lost traditions among the Southeast Asian Hmong.
Some Hmong went further to seek out "really Hmong" people through unofficial channels with whom they could speak Hmong to. However even after successfully finding them, they found that there were dialect variations that differed from the Hmong that they grew up speaking. As Hmong refugees discovered the differences between themselves and the Chinese Miao, some non-Hmong Miao people such as the Hmu started referring to themselves as Hmong to express nationalistic sentiments. Contributing to this trend is the tendency of professional linguists to use the names of smaller ethnic groups to refer to the broader categories such as Hmong–Mien languages rather than Miao-Yao languages. This is due to the outsized influence of groups outside of Asia such as the Hmong and Mien who are able to articulate their cause, thereby affecting some proto-nationalistic movements within the Miao to identify as Hmong despite not actually being Hmong.
Hmong/Miao identity
Miao or Meo carried strong pejorative connotations in both China and Southeast Asia. It was more so a stereotype such as uncivilized, uncooperative, uncultivated, harmful, and inhumane than a name of an ethnic group and was used in daily conversations as an expression for ugliness and primitiveness. Due to these negative connotations, the Hmong promote the use of Hmong as a replacement for Miao. In modern times, however, Miao has lost such negative connotations in China and has since been officially recognized as an ethnicity, which includes the Hmong. The Hmong in China are often happy or proud to be known as Miao while most Hmong outside China find it offensive. According to Louisa Schein, Miao is a neutral ethnonym within China and the only term that encompasses all its subgroups.According to Gary Yia Lee writing in the Hmong Studies Journal, the choice to identify as Miao was a deliberate and strategic decision its members advocated for in recognition of its potential benefits. Rather than being split into multiple smaller groups with short and murky histories, the Miao chose to adopt one ethno-name representing 9.2 million people claiming a long history dating back to ancient China. Their larger population granted them the strength and support befitting of the fifth largest nationality in China. In addition, by claiming kinship to the San Miao referred to in ancient Chinese history, they positioned themselves as pre-existing inhabitants of China prior to the arrival of the Han, imparting a "legendary stature to the present-day Miao" that "bestows the dignity of great antiquity, authoritativeness and a firm standing in the documentary record".
Contemporary transnational interactions between Hmong in the West and Miao groups in China, following the 1975 Hmong emigration, led to the development of a global Hmong identity that includes linguistically and culturally related minorities in China with no previous ethnic affiliation. In 1994, a Miao woman from China was chosen as the winner of the Miss Hmong Beauty Pageant in Fresno, California. Costume styles were imported from China and used in festivals. Scholarly and commercial exchanges, increasingly made over the internet, have also resulted in an exchange of terminology, including some Hmong people accepting the designation Miao after visiting China and some nationalist non-Hmong Miao peoples identifying as Hmong.
In Southeast Asia, Hmong people are referred to by other names, including: Vietnamese Mèo, Mông or H'Mông; Lao or ; Thai or ; and Burmese . With a slight change in accent, the word "Meo" in Lao and Thai can be pronounced to mean
"cat". The term Maew and Meo derived from the term Miao.