Listen to this articleOverview
Chinese Name: 布依族
English Name: The Buyi people
Languages: Buyi language 布依语, Chinese 汉语
Total population: 2.87*106 (China mainland 2022)
Distribution: Mainly distributed in Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan.etc
Brief introduction
The Buyi people 布依族 are a relatively large minority in southwestern China. The national language is the Buyi language, which belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family 汉藏语系 and uses Chinese in common. The Buyi people evolved from ancient liaisons, and they mainly focus on agriculture.
The history of the Buyi people
According to the identification of cultural relics unearthed in the Buyi inhabited area, it is found that the shapes of some of the stone tools are very similar to those of the same kind in the southeastern coastal areas and southern China. Therefore, it is inferred that the Buyi may be a branch of the Baiyue people 百越.
The religion of the Buyi people
The Buyi people believe in ancestors and various gods. Mountains, water, wells, caves and strangely grown ancient trees are all considered to be the incarnation of gods. Each village has a land temple. In addition, the Buyi people in various places also worship the god of thunder, the god of doors, the god of kitchen, the king of dragons and so on. These reflect the primitive religious beliefs of the Buyi as a farming nation.
The Cultures of the Buyi people
Buyi clothing 布依族服饰
The clothing of the Buyi nationality is mostly blue, blue and white. After the 1970s, men’s clothing was no different from Hanfu 汉服. The main features of the older Buyi costumes are short coats with large collars. The necklines, crossed shoulders, sleeves and edges of the legs are all inlaid with geometric patterns of brocade and batik. Women wear pleated long skirts, sewn with blue batik on a white background, and wear various silver jewellery.
Buyi women pay attention to headgear. Before marriage, their hair is braided and they wear embroidered headscarves. After marriage, special ornaments made of bamboo shoot shells must be used, which means to become a member of the family.
Bouyi craft 布依族工艺
The Buyi arts and crafts mainly include batik, embroidery, brocade, bamboo weaving, weaving and dyeing, ceramics and sculpture, etc. among which batik dyeing is the most famous. Batik is a treasure in the treasure house of Chinese culture and art. Its traditional crafts include indigo dyeing, batik dyeing, maple dyeing and tie-dyeing.
The production method is first to use a copper wax knife to dip the wax liquid on the white cloth to draw swirl patterns, wave patterns, rhombus, symmetrical geometric patterns, etc., and then use indigo solution with herbal printing and dyeing, and then remove the wax. The natural ice cracks of the finished product are diverse and beautiful.
The brocade has a variety of styles, and the patterns are diamond, square, triangle or back-shaped characters interspersed and combined. The brocade surface is similar to silk embroidery, but it is woven on an ancient cloth machine, and the back of the brocade flower faces the weaver. If you want to check the colour during weaving, you need to use a mirror to reflect it from below. In this way, the women operate skillfully from memory, inheriting the technology and craftsmanship of their ancestors.
Buyi festivals 布依族节日
The Buyi people have many traditional festivals. Except for the New Year 新年, the Dragon Boat Festival 端午节, and the Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节, which are similar to those of the Han people 汉族, the Buyi people also have festivals with their own characteristics.
Eat the new festival 吃新节, also known as tasting the new festival. Due to the maturity of the grains in different places, the festival dates are not the same. Generally, when the rice is about to mature, a man from the family will go to the field to pick a small amount of grain, put it in the retort and steam it with the glutinous rice, and then worship the ancestors.
Buyi diets 布依族饮食
The Buyi people take rice as their staple food, and also eat corn, wheat, barnyard grass, and buckwheat. The Buyi people are especially fond of glutinous food, and there are many ways to make them, such as making glutinous rice cakes, round sugar cakes, ear cakes, pillow dumplings and triangle dumplings. During the festivals, glutinous rice must be eaten, and glutinous rice cakes are given to relatives and friends. On such festivals, they also like to eat various glutinous rice dyed with flower juice and leaf juice.
non-staple food has a variety of vegetables, beans and meat. Meat processing includes smoked bacon and sausages. Buyi people like to eat dog meat, which is processed in different ways and has a unique flavour.
Buyi architecture 布依族建筑
There are several types of houses of the Buyi nationality: buildings, half-buildings and bungalows. The half-building generally adopts the architectural pattern of the second half of which is a bungalow, the front half of which is a building, or the left half is a bungalow and the right half is a building.
Buildings and semi-buildings are the traditional architectural forms of the Buyi people. The upper floors of the buildings are high for people to live in, and the lower floors are low for livestock. The structure of the building is simple, the form is beautiful, and it is suitable for the terrain characteristics of the southern mountainous area.
