The 56 Ethnic Groups of China

My friend Cubxotic, a Pinoy I might add, had found this post on a site called ChinaHush about Chen Haiwen, a photographer and his project that lead him to travel around China taking family portraits of families of different ethnic groups in their traditional garbs. I knew there were a lot of different ethnicity subgroups in China and to think about it, since China has existed for so long and had waged war with so many nearby countries, there has got to be a lot of different tribes living in the same land, I just didn't realize how many were there.

Here are a few of them with more distinguish costumes:


The most prominent ethnic group in China, most people consider themselves as "Han people". Though I doubt that any of us are pure Han at this point.


From the people who brought us the Mongolian BBQ, love the two sumo-like warriors bearing their chests and bellies.


They took over China and formed the last dynasty before the people revolted. A lot of movies and TV shows were about how people schemed against the Manchurian empire and succeeded. (sorta)


Another big ethnic group in the Western, more spiritual part of the country.


The Chinese Muslims pretty much lives all around the country.


The headress looks like horns that is made out of silver, but what's with that gun?


That guy up from looks like a wise old man that you wouldn't want to offend. He's ready to KICK. YOUR. ASS.


According to Wikipedia, their traditional costumes are made of cotton and linen, but I bet they have something to do with silk worm keeping while making cloth.


The white clan who hold the color white in high esteem.


Also called "Monguor" or "White Mongol", I do like that splash of yellow on top of the black background.


The aboriginal people of Taiwan, I think.


Love the bright red on the guy and of course the camel in a family portrait is priceless. I wonder what are the roast pork looking things hanging on the right.


Oroqen means people who uses reindeers. They wear a lot of furs and skins to overcome to cold of the north.


With a population of only 7,000. Derung was once thought to be the Southern Barbarians.


The Chinese believed that every East Asian culture originated from China, just like Japan and Korea. I'm sure that can never be proven or disproved.


I didn't know about Kazakhstan until Borat comes to the scene but apparently there's 1.5 Million of them living in China.


Kyrgyzstan is even more foreign to me. Love the pink Indian goddess look.


Russia is adjacent to China and there are cities in China where Russian is spoken. People migrates.

These 56 ethnic groups are officially recognized, there are still a lot of subset unrecognized. I wonder how many languages ends up on the table if they do study it. What about the overseas Chinese, like the Chinese-Australians and Chinese-Canadians. Would they be very different? Do go to the site to explore and look at more pictures.