Xibe of the Ili Valley and the Great March That Guards a Frontier

Far in the west of China, in the Ili valley of Xinjiang near the border with Kazakhstan, lives a people whose home was once two thousand miles away in the forests of the northeast, the Xibe. A Tungusic people kin to the Manchus, they were enrolled as bannermen by the Qing and, in 1764, a body of Xibe soldiers and their families was sent on a year-long march across the whole breadth of the empire to garrison the western frontier, where they have kept the bow, the Manchu-derived script, and a living Manchu-like language with remarkable fidelity.

This account follows the Xibe from their origins among the Tungusic peoples of the northeast, through the banners of the Qing and the great Westward Migration, into their language and Manchu script, their ancestor worship and the Xilimama, and the archery, the canals, and the festival of the march that mark them. It ends with the Xibe of today, keepers of a living Manchu heritage, holding their language and their memory alive on the western frontier of modern China.

The Garrison People of the Western Frontier
Sibe, Xibe, and the Name of the People
The Xibe Tongue and the Manchu Script They Kept
The Ili Valley and the Old Manchu Northeast
The Banners, the Garrison, and the Old Order
The Clan, the Garrison, and the Bonds of the Xibe
The Ancestors, the Xilimama, and the Spirits
The Bow, the Westward March, and the Ways of the Xibe
The Archers, the Farmers, and the Makers of the Bow
Grain, the Field, and the Table of the Frontier
The Westward Migration, the New Year, and the Feasts
From the Northeast to the Guarding of the West
The Xibe in Modern China

The Garrison People of the Western Frontier

Far in the west of China, in the Ili valley of Xinjiang near the border with Kazakhstan, lives a people whose home was once two thousand miles away in the forests of the northeast, the Xibe. Numbering some hundred and ninety thousand, they are divided between their old homeland in the northeast, about Shenyang, and the western garrison in the Ili valley, to which their forefathers were sent to guard the frontier and where they have kept their old ways with remarkable fidelity.

The Xibe belong to the Tungusic peoples of the northeast, kin in the deep past to the Manchus, the Evenki, and the other Tungusic folk of the forests and rivers of Manchuria, and their language is close to Manchu. Their forebears were among the peoples of the northeast whom the rising Manchu state enrolled in its banners, and they served the Qing as soldiers and frontier guards.

The great turning point of their history came in the eighteenth century, when the Qing, having conquered the far west, sent a body of Xibe soldiers and their families on a long march across the whole breadth of the empire, from the northeast to the Ili valley, to garrison the new frontier. There, on the western marches, this western branch of the Xibe settled and has remained to this day.

To speak of the Xibe is to speak of a Tungusic people of the northeast who became the guardians of the far western frontier, keepers of the bow, of the Manchu-derived script, and of a memory of the great march that carried them across the empire. Divided between the old home in the northeast and the western garrison of the Ili, they hold a singular place among the peoples of China.

Sibe, Xibe, and the Name of the People

The people are known as the Xibe, or in other spellings Sibe or Sibo, the name they give themselves, and it is by this name that the state recognises them as one of its nationalities and sets aside the Qapqal Xibe autonomous county in the Ili valley. The name is their own word for who they are, borne through the long march and the centuries on the western frontier.

The origin of the name is old and debated, reaching back into the history of the peoples of the northeast, where the Xibe and their forebears lived before the rise of the Manchu state. Under various renderings the name appears in the records of the Qing, marking a people enrolled in the banners and valued as soldiers and frontier guards of the empire.

The Xibe are divided today between two homes far apart, the old homeland in the northeast, about Shenyang in Liaoning, where the greater number live, much assimilated to the Han and the Manchu around them, and the western garrison in the Ili valley, where the descendants of the eighteenth-century march have kept the old language and customs with far greater fidelity.

Whatever the spelling, the people know themselves as one, the Xibe, a Tungusic folk of the northeast and the guardians of the western frontier. The name marks them among the peoples of China as kin to the Manchus, keepers of the bow and the Manchu-derived script, and heirs to the memory of the great march that made the western Xibe the sentinels of the Ili.

A name written in Manchu script

The Xibe Tongue and the Manchu Script They Kept

The Xibe speak a language of the Tungusic family, very close to Manchu, so close indeed that the Xibe tongue is often reckoned a form or a close sister of Manchu, and it is among the few living languages of that branch. This kinship reflects the common origin of the Xibe and the Manchus among the Tungusic peoples of the northeast.

Here lies one of the most remarkable facts about the Xibe, for while the Manchu language, once the tongue of the rulers of China, has all but died out among the Manchus themselves, the western Xibe of the Ili have kept their close kindred language alive as a living, spoken, and written tongue. They are thus, in effect, among the last keepers of a living Manchu speech.

The western Xibe write their language in the Manchu script, the vertical alphabet the Qing used for the Manchu tongue, adapted a little for the Xibe speech, and they have kept schools, newspapers, and books in it. Through the Xibe, the Manchu script and a language close to Manchu have survived as a living written and spoken tongue on the far western frontier, long after they faded in the northeast.

In the eastern homeland about Shenyang, by contrast, most Xibe have long since given up their own tongue for Chinese, much as the Manchus did, and it is above all in the western garrison of the Ili that the language lives. Standard Chinese has spread there too, and the keeping of the Xibe tongue is a matter of care, but its survival makes the western Xibe precious keepers of a rare Tungusic and Manchu heritage.

Text in the Manchu-derived Xibe script

The Ili Valley and the Old Manchu Northeast

The Xibe have two homelands, far apart across the breadth of China. The older lies in the northeast, in Liaoning about the city of Shenyang, the old Manchu heartland, where the greater number of Xibe live, and the western lies in the Ili valley of Xinjiang, in the Qapqal Xibe autonomous county on the south bank of the Ili river, where the descendants of the eighteenth-century garrison dwell.

The Ili valley, the western home, is a green and fertile land watered by the Ili river as it runs west toward Lake Balkhash, ringed by the high Tian Shan mountains and lying near the border with Kazakhstan. Here the Xibe garrison settled, dug canals to water the land, and turned the valley into fields of grain, building the eight garrison villages that became the western homeland of the people.

The Qapqal county, on the south bank of the Ili, is the heart of the western Xibe, a land of farms and villages and the old garrison towns, with the temples and the monuments that keep the memory of the great march. It was in this fertile but distant valley, two thousand miles from their northeastern home, that the western Xibe kept their language and their ways alive.

Between the old northeastern home about Shenyang and the western garrison of the Ili lies the whole breadth of China, the distance of the great march that carried the western Xibe from the one to the other. Rooted now in these two far-apart lands, the Xibe made their fullest homeland in the Ili valley, where a people of the northeast became the guardians and the tillers of the western frontier.

The Ili river at Yining in the Xibe country

The Banners, the Garrison, and the Old Order

The old way of the Xibe was the way of the banner, the military organisation of the Manchu Qing state, in which the Xibe were enrolled as soldiers and frontier guards. Organised into companies and banners under their officers, the Xibe men were at once soldiers and farmers, holding land in return for military service, ready to be called to arms and to be sent, as they were, to distant frontiers.

When the Qing conquered the far west and needed to garrison the new frontier of the Ili, they chose the Xibe, among others, for the task, and in the year 1764 a body of some thousands of Xibe soldiers and their families set out from the northeast on a march across the whole breadth of the empire, a journey of over a year and of great hardship, to reach the Ili valley. This westward march is the central event of the western Xibe memory.

In the Ili the Xibe garrison settled in eight villages along the river, dug the great canal that waters the Qapqal land, and became soldier-farmers of the frontier, guarding the border and tilling the fields, keeping their banner organisation, their language, and their customs on the distant marches. Their life was ordered by the garrison and the banner, by military duty and the farming year.

Governed by their officers and the banner system, and serving the Qing as the guardians of the western frontier, the western Xibe lived as soldier-farmers of the Ili. Cut off by the whole breadth of the empire from their northeastern home, bound together by their garrison, their language, and the memory of the great march, they kept their Tungusic and Manchu heritage alive on the far frontier.

The Clan, the Garrison, and the Bonds of the Xibe

Xibe society rests on the clan and the family, ordered in the old days by the banner organisation of the Qing. Descent is reckoned through the father’s line, and the Xibe are grouped into clans, each bearing its name and tracing a common ancestor, and the members of a clan honour the same forebears, owe one another the duties of kin, and marry outside the clan.

In the western garrison the banner and the company were the frame of society, for the Xibe were soldier-farmers organised for war and for the tilling of the land, and a man’s place was in his company and his village. This military organisation, kept up through the Qing, gave the western Xibe a discipline and a cohesion that helped them hold together and keep their ways on the distant frontier.

The family was the foundation of Xibe life, the extended household of several generations, and respect for elders and for the ancestors ran through the whole of society. Marriage was arranged by the families according to custom, marked by the exchange of gifts and by feasting, and the ties of marriage bound the clans and the garrison villages together.

Women held an honoured place, working in the fields and the household and, as weavers and workers of cloth, making the goods of daily life, and the Xibe kept the honouring of the ancestors, above all through the Xilimama, the sacred cord that recorded the generations of the family. Through the clan, the banner, and the family, the Xibe individual was bound into a close and disciplined society of the frontier.

A tower in the Qapqal Xibe autonomous county

The Ancestors, the Xilimama, and the Spirits

The older faith of the Xibe, like that of their Tungusic and Manchu kin, was rooted in the shamanism of the northeast and in the worship of the ancestors and the spirits of the natural world. The shaman stood as the link between the people and the spirits, and offerings and rites honoured the ancestors and secured the blessing of the spirits on the family and the crop.

A distinctive mark of Xibe ancestor worship is the Xilimama, a long sacred cord kept in the home and hung across it at the new year, to which are tied small objects, a bow for a boy born, a cloth for a girl, and knots and tokens marking the generations and the events of the family. The Xilimama is at once a record of the lineage and a sacred guardian of the household, honoured with offering and reverence.

Alongside the older shamanism and ancestor worship the Xibe took in, in the days of the Qing, much of the Tibetan Buddhism and the Chinese folk religion of the peoples around them, and they built temples in the Ili garrison, among them the Taiping temple, that served the religious life of the community. The faith of the Xibe thus blended the old shamanism, the ancestor cult, and the Buddhism of the frontier.

In the modern age the old shamanism has weakened, but the honouring of the ancestors, above all through the Xilimama, and the reverence of the temples remain part of Xibe life. The keeping of these rites, like the keeping of the language and the memory of the march, has helped the western Xibe hold to their identity on the far frontier through the long centuries.

The Xilimama shrine in a Xibe ancestral temple

The Bow, the Westward March, and the Ways of the Xibe

The most famous of Xibe traditions is archery, the skill of the bow, for the Xibe were soldiers and frontier guards, and the bow was the mark and the tool of the man. So strong is the tradition that the Xibe of the Ili are renowned across China as archers, and the county of Qapqal has become known as a home of the sport, sending fine archers to the wider country and keeping the old skill alive.

The memory of the great westward march of 1764 is itself a cherished tradition, kept alive in story, in song, and in the yearly festival that recalls the departure of the ancestors from the northeast and their long journey to the Ili. This memory of the march is the heart of the western Xibe identity, binding the people to their forebears and to the duty that carried them across the empire.

The keeping of the language and the Manchu-derived script is a tradition in itself, for the western Xibe have held to their tongue and their writing with a fidelity remarkable among the peoples of China, keeping schools, books, and newspapers in the Xibe script. Through this the people have preserved a living Tungusic and Manchu heritage long after it faded elsewhere.

Around these run the customs of the year and of life, the honouring of the ancestors through the Xilimama, the courtship and the weddings, and the festivals of the frontier garrison. Through the bow, the memory of the march, and the keeping of the language, the Xibe mark their identity and the passages of life in ways carried down from their forebears, the guardians of the western marches.

The Archers, the Farmers, and the Makers of the Bow

The crafts of the Xibe are the crafts of a people of soldiers and farmers of the frontier. Chief among the skills of the man was the making and the mastery of the bow, and the bows, the arrows, and the gear of archery were made with care, for on them rested the fame and the duty of the Xibe as guardians of the frontier and, in later times, as sportsmen.

The tilling of the land was the other great skill of the western Xibe, for the garrison in the Ili dug the long canals that watered the Qapqal land and turned the valley into fields of grain, a labour of engineering and toil that made the desert border bloom. The building and keeping of these canals was among the great works of the Xibe, and the farming of the watered land their mainstay.

The women of the Xibe wove and sewed the cloth and the dress of the household, worked leather and made the goods of daily life, and kept the Xilimama, the sacred cord of the lineage. The building of the houses, the temples, and the garrison towns, and the carving and painting of the temples, drew on the skills of the people and of the wider frontier world.

The keeping of the Manchu-derived script was itself a craft of learning, for the Xibe scribes and teachers copied and printed the books, the documents, and the newspapers that kept the language alive. Yet it is for the bow and the archery, and for the canals and farming of the Ili garrison, that the crafts of the Xibe are best known, an art bound to the soldier-farmer life of the western frontier.

Grain, the Field, and the Table of the Frontier

The food of the Xibe is the food of a farming people of the frontier, built on the grain that their watered fields bore, above all wheat and other grains, ground into flour and made into the noodles, the flatbreads, and the steamed breads of the north and the west. Rice too is grown in the watered land of the Ili, and the grain of the fields gives the Xibe a full store of bread and porridge.

To the grain are added the vegetables of the garden, the mutton and beef of the herds, and the foods of the frontier, for the Ili valley lies in a land of many peoples, and the Xibe table has taken in something of the ways of the Kazakh, the Uyghur, and the other peoples around them. Mutton is the meat of festivals and welcome, and the offering of food to a guest is a mark of the warm hospitality of the people.

The Xibe are known for a distinctive fermented sauce and for pickled and preserved foods that carry them through the long frontier winters, and for a hearty cooking suited to the climate. Tea is drunk and offered to guests, and the foods of the garden and the field, the wheat, the vegetables, and the meat, make a fuller and more settled table than that of the herding peoples of the steppe.

Grain wine and other liquors, brewed in the household, are the drink of hospitality and of the festivals, poured for guests and shared at the great occasions, above all at the festival of the westward march and the new year. From the wheat and rice of the watered fields to the mutton of the herds and the pickles of the frontier, the food of the Xibe is that of a settled soldier-farmer people of the western marches.

The Westward Migration, the New Year, and the Feasts

The greatest and most distinctive festival of the Xibe is the festival of the Westward Migration, kept on the day that recalls the departure of the ancestors from the northeast in 1764 on their long march to the Ili. On this day the western Xibe gather to remember the great journey, to honour their forebears and the duty that carried them across the empire, and to hold the feasting, the archery, and the games that mark the day.

This festival of the march is the heart of the western Xibe year and identity, a day of memory and pride that binds the people to their history and to the ancestors who made the great journey. The story of the march, told and sung, and the gathering of the community, renew each year the sense of who the Xibe are and how they came to the far frontier.

The new year and the other festivals of the year are kept as well, with the hanging of the Xilimama, the sacred cord of the lineage, across the home, the honouring of the ancestors, the gathering of kin, and the feasting and games of the season. The temples of the garrison, among them the Taiping temple, are the sites of the religious festivals of the people.

The passages of life, birth, marriage, and death, gather the kin for ceremony, and the weddings are celebrated with feasting and song. At all these occasions the archery and the games, the songs, the dress of the people, and the grain wine bring colour and pride, so that the Xibe meet the great moments of life and the year, and above all the memory of the march, with feast, contest, and the honouring of the ancestors.

A monument to the Westward Migration of the Xibe

From the Northeast to the Guarding of the West

The Xibe were among the Tungusic peoples of the northeast, dwelling in the forests and plains of Manchuria, when the rising Manchu state, in the seventeenth century, enrolled them and many of their neighbours in its banners as soldiers and frontier guards. As bannermen of the Qing, the Xibe served the empire, and were moved and settled by it as its needs required.

The great turning point came in the year 1764, when the Qing, having conquered the far western region of the Ili, needed soldiers to garrison the new and distant frontier. A body of some thousands of Xibe soldiers and their families was chosen and sent on a march across the whole breadth of the empire, from the northeast to the Ili, a journey of over a year and of great hardship, remembered ever after as the Westward Migration.

In the Ili the western Xibe settled in eight garrison villages, dug the great canal that waters the Qapqal land, and became the soldier-farmers and guardians of the western frontier, keeping their banner organisation, their language, and their customs through the fall of the Qing and the turbulence that followed. Cut off from their northeastern home, they held to their ways with remarkable fidelity.

After the founding of the People’s Republic the Xibe were recognised as one of the official nationalities of China, and the Qapqal Xibe autonomous county was established in the Ili valley. The modern age has brought roads, schools, and the reach of the state to the western garrison, and the Xibe, above all in the Ili, are cherished as the keepers of a living Manchu language and script long faded elsewhere.

The Xibe in Modern China

Today the Xibe number some hundred and ninety thousand, divided between their old homeland in the northeast, about Shenyang in Liaoning, where the greater number live much assimilated to the Han and the Manchu, and the western garrison in the Ili valley of Xinjiang, above all in the Qapqal Xibe autonomous county, where the descendants of the great march keep the old language and customs alive.

Modern life has come to the Xibe of the Ili in the shape of roads, schools, and the reach of the market, and the watered fields of the Qapqal land are farmed with modern means. The western Xibe remain celebrated across China as archers, and the county of Qapqal as a home of the sport, while the festival of the Westward Migration is kept each year as the emblem of the people.

The great treasure of the western Xibe is their living language and the Manchu-derived script, kept in schools, books, and newspapers, which makes them precious keepers of a Tungusic and Manchu heritage all but lost among the Manchus themselves. Yet standard Chinese spreads among the young, and the keeping of the language and the script is a matter of growing care.

Through their long and singular history the Xibe carry their heritage with pride. The bow and the archery, the memory of the great march and its yearly festival, the living Manchu language and script, the Xilimama and the honouring of the ancestors endure as marks of who they are. A Tungusic people of the northeast who became the guardians of the western frontier, the Xibe keep their language and their memory alive in modern China.