Tuwa People

Tuwa People
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Tuwa people were called “Dubo” in the Sui, Tang dynasties and “Tuba”, or “Dewa”and “Kukumenqiak” in the Yran dynasty. Since it belongs to a branch of Mongolian nationality, it is exactly called Tuwa people of Mongolian nationality.
The Kanas is in the territory of the Hemu Kanas Mongolian township. Burqin county, with over 1400 Tuwa inhabitants. At the Kanas village by the bank of the Kanas Lake alone, there are 120 households of Tuwa people, with a population of almost 700. Tuwa language used by Tuwa people is one of rare languages remained in China, which distinguishes from Mongolian branch, Altaic language family and belongs to Turkic language branch. It directly represents many phonetically phenomena prior to the disintegration of ancient Turkic language and has an important value for the study of ancient Turkic nationality’s split. The Tuwa people have settled down in Kanas for ages. They, known as “forest people” like to live in mountainous forest belt and make their living by hunting and herding.As they rarely communicate with the outside world, they almost completely keep their ancient tribe, clan ideas and religious belief. The Kanas has their rich historical and cultural remains, including: rock carving, rock painting, sacrice and tomb burial. The Tuwa people build their houses with pine wood, whose four walls are stacked up with logs, with ceiling floor and slant pointed roof suitable for frequent rain and snow surrounding in mountainous area. When flowers bloom in warm spring, they drive their cattle and sheep to the summer pasture on the top of a mountain.In late autumn, they drive their stocks down the hills and live in the log cabins for a long winter. They live mainly on dairy products, meat and flour, such as: beef, sheep, milk, cheese, dried yogurt, sour milk, butter, milky tea and milky wine etc. The Tuwa people, both men and women, are fond of wearing Mongolian robes with laces and bright colour, colourful satin band tying waist. Besides, they have on leather boots and felt boots. On holidays and wedding banquets, men also wear hats while women put on printed scarves. In winter, they wear self-made chute boards instead of shoes and travel on ice by taking an ice-sledge drawn by horse. The Tuwa people are good at both singing and dancing, skillfully playing the horsehead fiddle, two-string” Trobuherl” and mouth flute. In June every year, they have a grand recreation” the Aoba Festival”. which includes horse race, archery. Wrestle and dance as well as religious sacrificial service. Every year, they will observe the Spring Festival, the Lighting Lantern Festival and the Stone Group Festival. The Tuwa people’s religious belief keeps both primitive spontaneous worship of nature, worship of totem, worship of ancestors in the earlier worship form of primitive religion and worship of Shamanism, as a religion in the later period of primitive religion. And concurrently, they believe in religion of God Lamaism. Every year, they will offer sacrifices to mountains, water, heaven, trees, fish, Aoba, pray for Buddha and chant sutra. The Tuwa people’s burial forms consist of cremation, celestial burial and ground burial. Since cremation tends to cause mountain fire and celestial burial is not promoted, burial in ground is dominant form nowadays. Both young men and women fall in love with each other with their will inside the tribe. They will move into their newly-built log cabin and live an independent life after getting married. The wedding ceremony generally takes place in the slack season of autumn. A family's wedding ceremony is all the villagers' festival. Both men and women, the old and young dress in best, attend the banquet with their presents for congratulation. The wedding ceremony only lasts one day, during which, guests sing and dance, drink wine and eat meat; unmarried young men have a wrestling match. The activities keep going on until late night.