Brief Introduction of Tu Ethnic Group

The descendents of the Tuguhun people

The Tu nationality is one of the minor nationalities in China. Its present population is 191,624. The Tus people mainly distribute in Huzhu Tu nationality autonomous county, Minhe Hui and Tu nationalities autonomous county, Datong Hui and Tu nationalities autonomous county, Ledu county, Tongren county of Huangnan Tibetan Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, Menyuan county of Haibei Tibetan Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan nationalities Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai province, and Tianzhu Tibetan nationality autonomous county and Yongdeng in Gansu provinces, and so on. 

The Tu nationality is a national community that formed by taking the Tuguhun people in history as main body, and absorbing part of the Qiang, Tibetan, Mongolian, Han and other nationalities one after another. In the Chinese history of the Yuan dynasty, there had been the record of “Tu people”. Because they had close relationship with the Mongolian nationality in history, they called themselves as “Menggu’r”, “Menggu’r kong” and “Chahan Menggu’r”, etc. The people of the Han, Hui and other brother nationalities called them as the “Tus”, “Tu people” and “Tuhu nationality”. The Tibetan people called them as “Huo’r”. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, after the national recognition, they were integrally called as the Tu nationality according to the will of the Tus people. 

In early stages, the Tu nationality was engaged in animal husbandry industry. At present, it is mainly engaged in agriculture and takes animal husbandry industry as subsidiary. 

The Tu nationality has its own language. The Tu language belongs to Mongolian group, A’ertai language system, and part of it is the local language of the Huzhu, Minhe and Tongren counties. Because of the long-term contact and living together with the Han, Tibetan and other nationalities, its language has been deeply influenced by Chinese and Tibetan, and absorbed many words and vocabularies of them. 

The Tu nationality believes in Tibetan Buddhism. They contact and live together with the Han, Hui, Tibetan and other nationalities, but still keep their own tradition, and their clothing, decorations, ceremonies, customs and folk arts all have many unique points.