Qi people

Qi People
齊人

A Qi Female wearing Traditional Xifu
Total population
153 million (2019)
Regions with significant populations
Huajiang	90,096,659
Guakok	50,450,269
Languages
Standard Huajiangite Guavai
Religion
Tangdi

This article refers to the ethnic group in Huajiang. For the spiritual resource in Realms of the Multiverse, see Qì (Realms).

The Qi people (Qi script: 齊人; Alphabetized Huajiangite: qírén; Latin Guavai: tshihying) is a Serican ethnic group originating from the south of present-day Huajiang. They are the majority group in a number of Serican countries, including Huajiang and Guakok. Within Huajiang, they constitute 82.7% of the population, while in Guakok, they constitute about 79.4% of the total population. The term Qi as well as the character 齊 are traced back to during the Qi Golden Era, as it is seen in the Yuwen (語文).

"Qi people" as a term refers to the people which shares a common ancestry correlating to any of the several tribes or clans that inhabited the Bei Peninsula of Serica that eventually became a part of the Qi Confederation. It is debated whether or not the term originally also applied to those who lived along the rivers that stemmed into the peninsula. The Qi people have been present within both Huajiang and Guakok since prehistory, though their arrival into the latter territory was part of an often violent expansion. In the late first millennium BCE during the time of the Qi Confederation, a group of Qi people migrated to modern-day Guakok into areas where Dai languags were mainly spoken. The local peoples were either conquered and killed, assimilated to Qi language and culture, or forced further west. After the migration, the Qi Confederation split between factions and dynasties, as the Western Migration was followed by inter-Qi conflict and the gradual cultural-linguistic divergence of the thereto homogenous Qi peoples.

The Qi script, used to write the various Qi languages as well as (in whole or part) some other languages of the region such as Dayhan, originates with the ancient Qi and is one of the world's oldest writing systems. Qi script is attested in its earliest stage as the Bei Peninsula Bone Script, the earliest confirmed evidence of Qi Script, used mainly in mystical writing such as divinations on animal bones, in particular tortoiseshell.

Qi people share a common genetic background, as before modernization, most Qi did not leave the continent of Serica. The Qi have, over time, intermarried with their neighbours, such as the Dai peoples, which is partly responsible for the differing genetic heritages of today's Qi. This is also intertwined with a range of cultural traditions and customs that are still observed by many Qi, especially in Guakok and western Huajiang.

Qi people are widespread throughout Serica, not concentrated into any single country. Most Qi people live in Huajiang and Guakok. However, continued expansion in the north and the Western Migration outside of the Bei Peninsula has spread Qi culture such as the writing system and the Yongheng religion throughout Serica, with the absorption of many native Serican groups through cultural assimilation and inter-ethnic marriage as well as the mixing of languages, with many other linguistic groups borrowing extensively from the Qi language(s). While the Qi script is the main means for writing the speech of all Qi peoples today, and readers of one language are typically able to read others with fairly little difficulty, the modern spoken languages are generally not mutually intelligible. This has made language paradoxically both a symbol of unity and of difference amongst the Qi.

The term most often used when referring to ethnically Qi people from outside Serica is Jiren (Qi script: 䶓人; Alphabetized Huajiangite: jìrén; Latin Guavai: Tsiying) and is used for those who identify as Qi and are of Qi heritage.

Qi culture is a major world culture, with traditions dating back to the time of the Qi Confederation and other cultural customs which postdate the Confederation. Despite the multiple language barriers that exist within contemporary Qi culture, orthodox customs and traditions normally do not deviate significantly.

Etymology

The term Qi derived from the name of the historical Qi Confederation, which is considered to be the first union of Huajiang and later to be the first golden age within Serica. The people who lived under the Qi Confederation were known as 齊人 (Qí rén)The later dissolvement of the Qi Confederation due to the Qi western migration

Distribution

Huajiang

Crowd of people in the streets of Western Gao'an

Huajiang has the largest number of Qi people, with around 90 million members of the population able to trace their ancestry to the ancient Qi clans, and who constitute 82.7% of the population. Qi people have been historically dominant within Huajiang, and the country is widely considered to be the ancestral homeland of the Qi people through the Jiasha River Delta. However the Qi people have historically been at odds with the Tusangga people who are considered non-Qi and who are the largest Huajiangite minority group that is not considered Qi.

Guakok

Over fifty million people in Guakok are Qi, primarily of Gua cultural background though with a large number of Hakka people in the east of the country. Approximately 79.4% of the country's population is of Qi background, and the Qi are the dominant group within the country. From the time of the earliest written records there has been intimate contact between Qi and non-Qi people in the lands now part of Guakok, especially the western regions where the indigenous minorities are largely concentrated. This mixing has impacted the culture and language of the Qi in Guakok; the Gua language has borrowed heavily from Dai languages and to a lesser extent from the Dayhan language and some elements of native religions were incorporated into the local practices of Yongheng.

Language

The Qi speak a variety of languages. The nearest common ancestor of all Qi languages is the Qi-Bodish language Old Qi, sometimes called Ancient Qi, which is the language of the oldest extant texts, but most of the languages spoken today are derived from a descendent of Old Qi called Middle Qi. This variety is the ancestral language of all Qi languages excluding some of not all Min languages and Tusanggan. Remaining languages, including the national languages of Huajiang, Huajiangite, and Guakok, Guavai, are derived from Middle Qi. Common characteristics of all Qi languages are the presence of tonal systems, mostly monosyllabic morphemes and a strong tendency towards analytic and isolating morphosyntax.

All Qi languages are normally written in the Qi script, a logographic script and one of the oldest writing systems in continuous use in the world. The logograms of the script all represent single syllables, even for submorphemic syllables such as in the word 蝴蝶 "butterfly" (Huajiangite: húdié, Gua: wuhtig) where the character 蝴 has no meaning and is used only in this word. Since all Qi speakers normally wrote in Classical Qi until the nineteenth century, there is a misconception that Qi languages have the same grammar and vocabulary, and are thus written identically but pronounced differently. However, this is inaccurate. Not only are the Qi languages grammatically and lexically divergent, but Huajiang also simplified many characters while Guakok did not. Compare the phrase "the farmer's house was burnt down" in Huajiangite and Guavai:

• 农人的房子被引燃了 nóngrén de fángzi bèi yǐnrán le
• 農人個家屋被但焚燒 nuñhying ke kiawuk piih tåang vuhngshau

Culture

Main article: Qi culture