Museum as a tribute to history of Huerjia
Print Edition
Having spent the last 30 years researching her family history, 64-year-old farmer鈥檚 wife Li Hongxiu is almost like an anthropologist.
Born in Qinghai Province in southwest China, Li moved to Altay in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to marry her husband Cao Zhongwei in the 1970s.
That was when she started to develop a keen interest in a special group of people called 鈥淗uerjia,鈥 meaning old local families in Chinese. Li eventually established a museum to commemorate their history.
鈥淢y husband鈥檚 grandfather is a descendant of Huerjia. He told me many stories of the families, how they came here, survived and thrived,鈥 she said.
Huerjia, originally a Kazakh word, specifically refers to some 40 families of Han ethnicity who settled at the foot of the Altay Mountains in the mid-19th century.
Researchers believe these migrants were likely to have been banished to the frontier after the peasant uprisings in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). They left their hometowns in Gansu, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. Now they have over 2,000 descendants, who live mainly in the township of Hongdun, in Xinjiang.
鈥淏efore Huerjia arrived, very few people lived here. Herders stopped and passed by; there was no permanent settlement around here,鈥 Li revealed.
Her grandfather-in-law and other elderly people recounted stories of how herdsmen learned to farm from the settlers, and how the farmers bought sheep and cattle and hired herders to graze them.
There was a time when the settlement became a bustling center of commerce before bandits started to raid the area, and the place started to fade into history in the first half of the 20th century, she said. 鈥淚 was in my early 20s when I got married, and the Huerjia stories intrigued me, so I started to talk with the elderly like my grandpa-in-law, and wrote down what they told me,鈥 she said.
As Li continued her research, she started to find patterns. Most of the Huerjia families consist of members from at least three ethnic groups, who speak two languages or more. Like her grandfather-in-law, most families have adopted orphans.
The Cao family consists of eight ethnic groups of Han, Kazakh, Uygur, Hui, Mongolian, Xibe, Russian and Korean. In the Cao family, different languages and customs coexist. Li speaks Mandarin and Kazakh.
To better preserve the history of migration, survival and integration, Li started to collect exhibits for her private Huerjia-themed museum in 2012. Now the museum, around 200 square meters, has a wide range of exhibits including horse saddles, basins used to wash gold, spinning wheels, plows and farm wares.
鈥淚 had a pair of saddle irons, and my children wanted to sell them, but I brought them to the museum. The memory of the past should be preserved.鈥
Li works both as the curator and the docent for the museum. 鈥淪he has spent a lot of time on this. Now she is an expert,鈥 her husband Cao said.
Last year, the museum received 10,000 visitors. The local government supported her with 200,000 yuan (US$30,000) for a new exhibition hall. 鈥淟i鈥檚 efforts are helping us make the local history known to more people,鈥 said Ziyidash, a young government employee with Hongdun.
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