The Han Nationality

Distributed all over China's territories, the Hans, with a population of over 1.2 billion, mostly live in the Songliao Plain in the northeast of the country, and on the middle and lower reaches of the big rivers-the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Pearl River. Since 300 A.D. the Han people have been well known for their creativity and diligence. Agriculture plays a dominant role in their economy, and their handicraft industry is highly developed. The rich Han culture has given birth to many notable scientists, philosophers, artists and poets who, as the nation's elite, have had great influence on the course of Chinese history.
The Han script, or Chinese writing, has undergone three thousand years of development to become what it is today in its simplified written form. The Han people attach much importance to etiquette. It is a traditional virtue to see that older people are respected and the young well cared for.

China is an ancient country whose brilliant culture spans five thousand years. On its vast land live fifty-six nationalities of which the Han are the most numerous as well as the most widely spread.

The architectural features of the Hans' traditional residential buildings vary according to the building materials. For example, in mountain areas where there are plenty of stones, houses are often built of this material. However, on the Yellow Earth Plateau in China's Northwest, cave dwellings provide shelter for the local people. In the South, where bamboo and reed are abundant, people use these to either build or decorate their homes. In the North, particularly in Jilin province, houses tend to have big windows and doors for ventilation. The characteristic colors are white (the white-washed walls), gray (the tiled roofs), and maroon (the painted window-sills and doors). The homes of the Kejia people, who are scattered over Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Gansu provinces, and whose ancestors immigrated to these areas around 1,600 years ago, have remarkable style. Members of those closely related Kejia families often live in a cluster of houses built in a huge circle.

It has been at least 4,700 years since Chinese Hans took to drinking tea. The custom of entertaining guests with tea as a sign of respect has survived to today. Tea preparations are various and complicated, so there is a assortment of teas-Taihu smokedª²peas tea, Suzhou Aromatic tea and Deqing salty-orange tea from Jiangsu province, Kong Fu tea from Chaozhou, Guangdong province, Bone-and-Meat tea in South Fujian province, salty ginger tea in Hunan and Longjing tea from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, to name only a few.

The Hans' eating habits vary from place to place. Generally speaking, wheat is the staple food for people in the North and rice for those in the South. As to wheat products, more and more sorts of noodles appear on the dinner table. They come in all shapes: round, flat, triangular, macaroni£þlike, and shredded; and in all flavours: fish, minced chicken-meat, shrimp roe, spinach, etc. They come in various ways: cold noodles served with soy sauce or sesame butter, scooped noodles served hot, stirª²fried noodles, noodles boiled in soup, stewed noodles, crisp deep-fried noodles, and so on. Each has a special flavor. Of all the varieties, the ones which are enjoyed throughout China include the breakfast soup noodles from Shashi, Hubei province, country-style noodles from Pinjing, Gansu province, Beijing's Dragon Whisker noodles, and the Dandan noodles from Chendu, Sichuan. The Hans value the art of cooking highly. They like best dishes cooked mainly with vegetables, meat, fish, poultry and eggs. Han cuisine is known throughout the world for its eight different cooking styles. The Hans also eat certain food because of the good fortune they represent. For example, around the lunar New Year's Day, people eat Jiaozi, a traditional food which is believed to bring good luck if it is eaten then, because the Chinese name for the food sounds similar to another expression meaning "to have (good luck or good fortune)." In the same way, on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, which is also the last day for the Spring celebration, people eat puffy deepª²fried doughnuts hoping for a prosperous new year, and New Year cakes for a similar symbolic meaning.

As times change, so has the Hans' style of dress. Until the 1940s, most men and women wore doubleª²breasted or diagonally-fastened tops and trousers. Colors were light in summer, but blue and black in winter. Nowadays, as people's attitudes towards dress have changed a great deal, men's clothes have shifted from the dull grayish-blue uniforms to all sorts of different styles, such as the Chinese tunic suit, and Western style clothes, while women's clothes are more diverse and colorful.

Important Han festivals include Tomb Sweeping Day, Dragonª²boat Day, the Lantern Festival and Mid Autumn Festival. Spring Festival is the biggest occasion. Traditional ways of celebrating the festival include putting up pictures of the gods which protect the household, eating Jiaozi, setting off fireworks, going to temple fairs and take part in fun activities like the Dragon Dance, the Lion Dance and Boating on Lake. On the lunar New Year Eve, some families make it a custom to stay up late or even all night to welcome in the New Year. In the next few days, friends and relatives exchange greetings or visit each other. Recently, a new form of entertainment has appeared: it is now an important event for almost every family on New Year Eve to watch Chinese Central Television's screening of the annual Spring Festival party. It is a colorful variety show-a real feast for both eyes and ears.

The Han nationality is extremely populous and its customs differ greatly from place to place. Young men and women mix freely and can choose their future spouse. Marriage is no longer arranged by their parents and the wedding ceremony tends to be simple yet lively. Nevertheless, in the vast rural areas, some old customs remain. The wedding ceremony is often held on a day chosen by a fortune-teller according to the couple's birth dates. On that day, representatives of the groom's family set off for the bride's home carrying the bridal sedan-chair, with the company of the joyful sound of gong and drum beat, mixed with the music of a folk woodwind instrument called Suona. The bride, dressed in brand-new red cotton-padded jacket and trousers, and new shoes made for the occasion, must be lifted into the sedan-chair by her brother in law or paternal uncle. When she gets out of the sedanª²chair, she is escorted by an elderly woman from the groom's family to join her future husband in making ceremonial obeisance, known as "paying respect to Heaven and Earth." This is done before a shrine-table put in the courtyard. On the table there is a paper-covered scoop made from Chinese sorghum with sticks of burning incense planted in it. Scattered over the table are leeks, chestnuts, dates, a lock of hair and a steel measuring yard. All these have a symbolic or linguistic meaning. They represent hopes for the birth of a clever baby, and for a happy life as close to each other as the arm of a steel yard and its sliding weight.

After the obeisance, the couple are ushered in to the wedding chamber. In some areas there is a custom of warming up nuptial bed beforehand by the groom's sister, in hope that the couple will maintain a life-long loving relationship.

As soon as the wedding banquet is over, the guests will usually visit the newly weds' house and take a look at the furnishings and the dowries. On the wedding night, young friends and relatives flock into the house to have a warming party with singing and dancing. They may make fun of the couple by forcing them to tell the story of their romance and then making the two of them bit one apple hanging from a string.

According to historical records, the nationality Han gets its name from the Han Dynasty. Before that, the people were called "Huaxia" or "Zhuxia." They were a group of many different tribal clans merged together. Han culture belongs to the world's oldest civilizations. It boasts a lot of outstanding achievements in many fields including politics, war, philosophy, literature, history, art and natural science. Among countless historical figures of both nationwide and worldwide influence are the historian Si Maqian, who wrote the famous Records of the Historian, and the great poets Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and Su Shi, who are world famous for their immortal verses. Traditionally, agriculture was the Hans' main occupation. In ancient China the family was the basic economic unit with "the men ploughing the fields and wives weaving, " as a Chinese saying puts it. Agriculture provided the nation' basic wealth and was highly advanced, especially in irrigation and intensive farming. There was also a high level of handicraft production.

Since the Qin and Han Dynasty (221 B.C.-220 A.D.), the Han nationality has kept in close contact with other nationalities. The People's Republic of China owes its foundation and development to the contributions made by both Han and the other nationalities.