Loving fun and art, the Bouyei are warm and hospitable. Home-brewed rice wine is served by the bowlful and marks nearly every Bouyei celebration. The men love to eat chilies until they sweat, while village grannies pass on blessings through ancient ballads. Young couples sneak away from these celebrations and woo one another with original love songs.

Population and Geographical Distribution

The Bouyei are one of the 55 minority people groups of mainland China. There are about 3 million Bouyei in China. They are widely distributed, with most living in Qiannan (Bouyei-Miao) Autonomous Prefecture and in the Xingyi, Anshun area of Guizhou Province. A smaller number of them live in southeastern Guizhou, the Wenshan area in Yunnan, and the Ningnan area in Sichuan.

Language

The Bouyei language comes from the Zhuang-Dai branch of the Chinese-Tibetan languages. Spoken Bouyei language is similar to the languages of the Zhuang, Dai, Shui and Dong people and has incorporated some Han words in the vocabulary. The Bouyeis had no written language until the government devised a writing system based on Latin letters in 1956. It is now used only for recording data on their history and their folk literature.

Livelihood and Economic Situation

More than 90% are agricultural workers. The Bouyei grow rice, wheat, maize, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, potatoes and beans. Profitable cash crops include cotton, ramie, tobacco, sugar cane and tea. Industries like iron and steel, coal, machine-building, chemicals, building materials and plastics are being developed in the region. The Bouyei also specialize in batik, tie-dying and embroidery.

Culture

The most distinct Bouyei villages are magnificent sights of layer after layer of stone buildings across mountain slopes. Stone masonry is the specialty of the Bouyei. In these stone villages, every home is built of solid rock, along with most of the furnishings. The largest of the stone villages hosts 1,200 people from about 217 families. Smaller villages may have wooden and bamboo homes, and more prosperous areas are now using brick with tile roofs.

Parties are also a specialty, and while the Bouyei are seen as happy drinkers, the results are less than pleasant. Party games encourage total intoxication. The host knows he three a good party when at least half of his guests are thoroughly drunk. The Bouyei like to sing and area also skilled in drama.

Women still tend to wear traditional clothes and headcoverings of batik and embroidery. Single Bouyei women wear scarves. After marriage, they wear a head shell or silver bowl, made of black cloth, bamboo leaves and rags, and shaped something like a dustpan. A patchwork kerchief carrying symbols of prosperity and happiness is tied to the end of the shell. The women will move to yet another headdress once they pass child-bearing age.

Political

Communist sources state that the Bouyei provided guides and provisions for Red Army troops during the Long March. Bouyei joined in armed rebellion against the Kuomintang in 1949. This area was brought under communist control in 1949.

Religion

Spirit worship is mixed with Daoist rituals and the ancestral worship of Chinese folk religion. Ancestral spirits are worshiped at altars in each home. Money and paper houses are burned at funerals, in hopes that the dead will get them in the next life. The dead are disinterred three years after the funeral, and the bones are placed in a clay jar and buried again.

Outside the home, food offerings and paper charms are presented to the spirits of certain trees or left at any number of small shrines throughout the village. Evil spirits are feared, and exorcism is often the only recourse.

Openness to Christianity

Known registered and house churches exist in the area, but most of the Christians in them are not Bouyei. Their Miao neighbors have a strong church. Missionaries did work with the Bouyei earlier this century, but there was no major turning to Christ. Some Christian workers are targeting the Bouyei at this time. The Bouyei are generally indifferent to the gospel, and more than 77% of these people have never heard of Jesus. Operation China estimates that there are about 5,000 Christians.

No scripture exists in Bouyei language and a group of Bible translators is currently determining the best way to achieve this worthy goal. Chinese Bibles and trained teachers are rare. The Bouyei have the Jesus film and Christian audio recordings in their language.

The only organization currently targeting projects among the Bouyei is the Amity Foundation, the organization of the TSPM (official Chinese church). It promotes health, education, social service and rural development. Amity Foundation is the official channel through which foreign Christians may contribute to Christian humanitarian efforts in China.