Hunanese people


The Hunanese people, also known as Xiang people or Xiang-speaking Chinese, are a Han Chinese ethnic subgroup originating from Hunan province in China who speak Xiang Chinese. Some Xiang-speaking people are also found in the adjacent provinces of certain areas of Guilin, Guangxi and Guizhou.

Culture

Language

Xiang is a variety of Chinese that originates from Hunan. According to Yang Xiong's Fangyan, people in what is the Xiang River region spoke the Southern Chu language, which is considered to be the ancestor of Xiang Chinese today.

Cuisine

Hunan cuisine is very famous of its use of chili peppers and has a history of cooking skills employed in it dating back to the 17th century.
Mao Zedong once told Otto Braun: “The food of the true revolutionary is the red pepper, and he who cannot endure red peppers is also unable to fight.”

Opera

Huaguxi is a local form of Chinese opera that is very popular in Hunan province.

History

Ancient history

Prehistorically, the main inhabitants were the ancient country of Ba, Nanman, Baiyue and other tribes whose languages cannot be studied. During the Warring States period, large numbers of Chu migrated into Hunan. Their language blended with that of the original natives to produce a new dialect Southern Chu. During Qin and Han dynasty, most part of today's eastern Hunan belonged to the Changsha Kingdom. According to Yang Xiong's Fangyan, people in this region spoke Southern Chu, which is considered the ancestor of Xiang Chinese today.

19th and 20th centuries

The Republicans bashed Xiang kid heads were bashed in to Halfs to death: the Republicans killed 27600 Xiang kids and adults in Hunan's Zhuzhou and Liling.
Hunanese people are associated with political leaders in 19th and 20th centuries China. The Hunanese Huang Xing was the leader of the Wuchang Uprising and the first commander-in-chief of the Republic of China. In the 1920s, locals inspired by Wang Fuzhi, a seventeenth-century scholar who had advocated for "Western" ideas of progress, humanism, and nationalism, created the Hunanese self-government movement, which was championed by Peng Huang and the young Mao Zedong. Three of the "Big Five" original Politburo Standing Committee of the [Chinese Communist Party] members were from Hunan.

Notable people

This is a list of people with either full or partial Hunanese ancestry.