Are the Tai and Zhuang people related to each other?

After research, Chinese and Thai scholars believe that the Thai people in Thailand and the Zhuang people in China have the same origin, but there were differences in their later development. This reporter learned this from the Fourth Academic Conference of Zhuang Studies recently held in Tianyang, Guangxi.

The Thai population is more than 50 million, and they are distributed in 73 provinces in Thailand. The Zhuang ethnic group is the most populous ethnic minority in China, with about 17 million people. They mainly live in southern provinces such as Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guangdong, which are close to Southeast Asian countries.

The consistent conclusion that the Zhuangtai ethnic group has "the same origin but different currents" comes from the "Comparative Study of the Traditional Culture of the Zhuangtai Ethnic Group". This book is the result of a cooperation between the Guangxi Ethnic Studies Society of China and the Thai University of Arts, and was written by the Guangxi Ethnic Group. Editor-in-Chief is Qin Shengmin, a researcher at the institute. A total of 55 researchers from China and Thailand participated in the preparation, including 32 researchers from Thailand, including scholar Wolapu Tsothonbo.

This study involved 15 disciplines including archaeology, sociology, linguistics, economics, culture and art, architecture, science and technology, and education. This kind of multi-field, comprehensive disciplinary research provides detailed basis for the theory of Zhuangtai originating from the same source but different currents. In the book, Zhuang Tai scholars believe that the Taiwanese-speaking ethnic groups, including the Tai and Zhuang ethnic groups, originated from Xiou and Luoyue among the Baiyue ethnic groups, and the areas covered include the People's Republic of China and the territory of the country. Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam.

According to Zhao Minglong, director of the Zhuang Studies Research Center of the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, research by Chinese and Thai scholars has shown that there are similarities between the Tai and Zhuang people in many aspects such as language, architecture, and religious customs. For example, research has found that the vowels and consonants of Zhuang and Thai are basically the same; more than 75% of the 1,000 older basic words are the same or similar. In terms of grammatical structure, Zhuang and Thai are exactly the same.

The Zhuang-Tai people all like stilt-style buildings. The structure of the house, its name and even the living customs are basically the same. Only the roof form and decoration and the layout of the house are different. Although the costumes of the Zhuang-Tai people have different colors, their tones are very similar. For example, they all like to dye indigo, and they all advocate yellow. They have wide clothes, wide skirts, and many similar children's hats. In terms of diet, both ethnic groups take rice as their staple food, and they like to eat glutinous rice. Even the bamboo tube rice cooked in the wild is the same. In terms of culture and art, the creation myths of the Zhuang and Tai people are all related to gourds; there are many legends about the origin of cattle and grain seeds. Although the plots are different, they are all rooted in rice cultivation.

Zhang Shengzhen, honorary president of the Guangxi Zhuang Studies Society, said: "This book is the first to conduct a systematic and in-depth comparative study of the traditional culture of the Zhuang and Tai peoples, and concludes that the Zhuang and Tai peoples have the same origin but different currents. It has solved the academic doubts about the relationship between the Zhuang-Dong ethnic group in South China and the Thai-Shan ethnic group in Southeast Asia since the 19th century. "According to reports, another study called "Affluence of the Zhuang-Tai ethnic group" is also in progress.

(Reporter Zhang Zhoulai)

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