There are approximately one million Hmong people in Vietnam today, living primarily in the mountain regions along the northern borders. Here is the history of this distinct ethnic group and how they’ve adapted to rapid economic, political, and cultural change.
It’s believed that the Hmong people were first settled in the area around the Yellow River in China. The communities survived on shifting cultivation, where the types of crops rotated until the land became infertile.
They grew wheat and barley at the higher elevations while alternating between corn and rice in the lowland hills. Every few decades, they would uproot their homes and move to a new area to start over again.
This mobility gave them many advantages, but it also made them easy targets for ruling authorities. The ancient town of Zhuolu is considered to be the birthplace of the widely proclaimed legendary Hmong king, Chi You.
Today, a statue of Chi You have been erected in the town The author of the Guoyu, authored in the 4th to 5th century, considered Chi You’s Jiu Li tribe to be related to the ancient ancestors of the Hmong, the San-Miao people.
The lineages of the Hmong people are difficult to trace because they’ve been handed down orally, but there remains a rich diversity to the communities that co-exist today. The easiest way to distinguish between them is the colors of their clothing.
The groups the Black, Striped, White, Leng, and Green, among others, also have their own customs and traditions, which are more apparent during festivals and weddings.
Starting in the late 18th century, as the population of the Han Chinese grew, the Hmong people were forced southward into the mountains along the borders with Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Vietnam.
Those who didn’t flee were subjugated, shamed, and killed by the Qing Dynasty government in China. Though the Hmong people have no political structure, they were often in open conflict with the Chinese authorities and the other colonial powers during this time, which led to widespread marginalization and persecution.
As communism swept through the region, the Hmong people were forced to pick sides, which often resulted in large groups being forced to migrate to new areas, especially in Laos and Thailand.
In Vietnam, the Hmong mostly sided with the Việt Minh the coalition of nationalists who eventually forced the French out of the country.
The Christian communities of the Hmong people, however, were forced to flee to the south because they had aligned themselves with the French. Those groups still face discrimination to this day.
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