China's Minority Peoples - The Bouyeis 布依族

The population of the Bouyei Nationality is 2,545, 059. Most of the Bouyei people live in Qiannan and Qianxinan Bouyei Miao autonomous prefectures and Duyun, Dushan, Pingtang and Zhenning counties of Guizhou Province. Others live scattered in Yunnan, Sichuan and Guangxi.

The Bouyei area boasts dramatic landscape. There are a dozen of scenic spots in this area, which receive thousands of tourists from all over the world each year. The most famous are the Huangguoshu Waterfalls, Huaxi in Guiyang. the Dragon Palace Cave in Anshun and the Chain Bridge over the Panjiang River. This area also abounds in wild plants, animals and mineral resources.

The Bouyei people have a long history in growing rice. The Honghe River Basin is one of the largest forest areas of China.

As early as the Stone Age, Bouyei people made their homes in the southeast of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and were closely related to the ancient Liao, Baiyue and Baipu peoples. The Tang government called them "Xinanmun". In the Song and Yuan dynasties, they were known as the Fan or Zhongj iaman people and were called the Zhongmans in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, these mountaineers have been generally called the Bouyei Nationality.

The Bouyei language belongs to the Zhuang-Dui branch of the Zhuang-Dong Group of the Sino-Tibetan family. No writing system was created until the 1950s. However, this system was not acceptable to most of the Bouycis. Now they generally use Chinese.