In the junior high school textbook, there is an ancient text called "Peach Blossom Origin", which tells that a group of Qin people fled to a paradise, and after the Song people inadvertently visited, the people inside did not know that the Qin Dynasty had died. Although the story is wonderful, we all know that this is not true, and there is no paradise in the world. However, there is such a place in Russia, to be precise, central Asia, where people actually speak Shaanxi dialect, inherit Shaanxi culture, known as "Dungan", and the visitors are confused by their words.
In the 1990s, a professor named Wang Guojie of Shaanxi Normal University stumbled upon a paper about the history of the Dungan people, written by a foreign scholar. After reading it, Wang Guojie always felt that something was wrong, although this nation was in a foreign country, but from the data point of view, it was no different from the Shaanxi compatriots, so he decided to investigate it himself.
By chance, Wang Guojie stepped on a plane to the Soviet Union, and when he learned that there was such a national settlement in Kazakhstan, he rushed over without stopping. Soon after, Wang Guojie finally entered the Dungan settlements (Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan), and what he did not expect was that he was questioned by an old man as soon as he arrived. When the old man saw him speaking in The Shaanxi dialect, he asked excitedly, "Are you from the Great Qing Dynasty?" Zuo Zongtang's people are still there? ”。
The people in the "Peach Blossom Origin" did not know that there was a Han, whether Wei or Jin, and did not expect that the people of the Dungan tribe did not know that the Great Qing Kingdom had died, but why did they specifically mention Zuo Zongtang? After research, this so-called Dungan ethnic group is actually an authentic Shaanxi compatriot, more than a hundred years ago, for various reasons, they either migrated or fled to Central Asia, and then took root and lived here, so it is said that this is an authentic "Shaanxi village".
Through the old man's questioning, it can be inferred that this group of Shaanxi people should be the remnants of the Hui rebellion more than a hundred years ago. In that year, Bai Yanhu launched a large number of Hui people to rebel against the Qing government, but was defeated by Zuo Zongtang's troops. Fearing the Qing government's strangulation, a considerable number of remnants fled abroad. In this way, the group that originally had only more than 10,000 people has reached more than 100,000 people after a hundred years of reproduction.
According to the local Dungan people, when they first came to Central Asia, the conditions were extremely difficult, due to lack of food and clothing and cold weather, many people lost their lives on the way, and finally the tens of thousands of people survived only a few thousand people. However, the local Native Russians were quite kind to them, not only setting up tents for them but also killing cattle and sheep to eat. The Dungan people survived by working for the locals, but at present, the Dungans rarely worked, and they hired the locals to work.
Although they are fleeing to a foreign country, the Dungan people have never forgotten that they are from China, let alone their own culture. Therefore, in the Dungan settlement, buildings with local ethnic characteristics can be seen everywhere, and their eating habits are no different from those of Shaanxi compatriots. It is even rumored that in order to ensure the purity of the race, they have been marrying within the clan, and it is difficult for the foreign clan to marry them.
As the Dungans became known to more and more people, many of them spontaneously returned to Shaanxi to find their roots, but many of them had already taken root in Central Asia and were reluctant to migrate back again. History rises and falls, the vicissitudes of the times, and the fate of this Chinese compatriot who is far away from home is unpredictable.