Tun Bao Culture-Sustainability and Loss

According to historical records, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang ordered stationing of troops nearly all over Guizhou and in parts of Yunnan Province. But why is it that the so-called “Tun Bao people” are now found only in parts of Anshun City in Guizhou Province? Why is it that the Tun Bao culture has disappeared elsewhere?

Another question may be even more interesting. In this mountainous province almost inaccessible to the outside world in ancient times, Anshun served as a vital passage to the neighboring Yunnan Province and therefore was most vulnerable to influence from outside. Why is it that Anshun is the only place where the customs and folkways of the Ming Dynasty soldiers and immigrants have been largely preserved? And why in other parts of the province, Tun Bao people have long been assimilated to the locals?

To answer these questions, experts argue, there is the need for us to examine the special social status once held by those Ming Dynasty soldiers and an abrupt change in it.

Guizhou Province had been inhabited exclusively by people of Kelao, Miao and other ethnic minority groups until Ming Dynasty soldiers came from the north, followed by their families and other immigrants. While soldiers charged with defending the country’s southwest, the soldiers were ordered to engage in farming for self-sufficiency. China had already had a well-developed agricultural economy in its hinterland and the soldiers were mostly peasants before joining or being press-ganged into the imperial army. In contrast, slash-and-burn wasthe prevalent method of farming by means of which the indigenous people had made a living. After the imperial troops came, most indigenous people - locals of ethnic minority groups - escaped, taking refuge deep in mountains.

A unique social status, plus a sense of pride for coming from better developed parts of China and therefore for being culturally “superior” to the indigenous people, prompted the soldiers to “go it alone” in their new homeland. The soldiers and their families formed separate communities from the indigenous people, in which they stuck to their old folkways, customs and military disciplines - in many cases even the original accent of theirs. As time went by, a dual-structure society emerged in the province. There were communities comprising Han Chinese who did farming while serving as garrison troops and, at the same, ethnic minority communities living high up on mountains.