Tun Bao-a Story of 600 Years

In some areas in Guizhou Province, southwest China, women can still be seen wearing long robes with loose sleeves that were popular some 600 years ago, during the Ming Dynasty.

The same music pieces of the Ming Dynasty are still performed, the difference being that these were performed for entertainment in imperial army camps or at religious ceremonies to pray for victory and now, in performances of a folk opera called “Di Xi”.

Housing buildings of the so-called the Tun Bao people are built with rocks, strong and resembling those ancient strongholds in shape. The two Chinese characters Tun and Bao, as a matter of fact, mean”strongholds for garrison troops.”Why is it that some of the ancient Han Chinese customs still exist in those areas? How to explain the cultural sustainability of the Tun Bao people? How much longer can the Tun Bao culture sustain under the impact of modernization? We are to answer these questions in the following article.

The Tun Bao - FROM SOLDIERSTO FARMERS

In September 1381, Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398), the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) that replaced the Yuan of the Mongols over China, ordered 300,000 troops to march into the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, of which Guizhou Province is a part. Three months afterwards, the imperial troops wiped out the remnant forces of the proceeding dynasty, who had put up a last ditch fight against the central government under the command of a Mongol prince named Pacha Warmi.

Now that the plateau was pacified, the emperor ordered the troops to stay where they were stationed, to guard places of strategic importance in Chinaﾕs southwest while engaging in farm production for self-sufficiency. Then their families came, along with other immigrants, from far-away places to the north, from areas south and north the Yangtze River that snakes through the breadth of the country, in what historians call the “first organized human influx into Guizhou Province.”

Tun Bao villages in Guizhou invariably have military terms in their names “for example, wei (garrison), suo (a unit under a garrison command), bao (blockhouse or fortification), guan (pass) and shao (watchtower), testifying to the fact that the residents are descendants of those soldiers who guarded the places.

Today, 600 years after the imperial troops of the Ming Dynasty settled in these areas, some of their descendants still follow those traditions left over from the soldier ancestors. For that, they are referred to as “Tun Bao peopleﾓ - meaning ﾒpeople living in fortifications.”