The Comparing Study On The Change Of Social Culture Between Hezhen And Nanai From Seventh To Twentieth Century

The Hezhen nationality in our country and Nanai in Russia were originally of common source and ancestor, with 300 years national history development (17-20th century). The Ching Dynasty ruled them in the first 150 years, and they were a whole nationality in the period. They lived in the middle and lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River, the drainage basin of the Songhua River and the Wusuli River, and were generally called Hezhen. Hezhen's traditional culture was also that of Nanai at the moment. In the middle of 19th century, due to the signed of China-Russia Aihui Treaty and China-Russia Beijing Treaty, the people of Hezhen who lived in the north of the Heilongjiang River, east of the Wusuli river generation after generation was incorporated into Russia, and hereby was called Nanai or Wuerqi. The Hezhen Nationality was divided into two, and became a nationality crossing the eastern border of Sino-Russia, i.e. a cross border ethnicity. Affected by various countries' main aspect culture and impacted by the progress of modernization, the traditional social culture took place a great change. Wuerqi is a part of Nanai, so Nanai includes Wuerqi in this article. Based on this, the article takes both of them as one ethnicity, and by use of the methods of historical comparing and trans-multi-course of study, from the point of cross border ethnicity, taking the middle of 19th century as the history boundary, divided their 300 years history by two parts. By lengthways history inspect and crosswise comparing study, the article bring to light that, in one hand, the Social Culture of Hezhen and Nanai is changing from traditional society mainly dependence on fishery and hunt economy to modern society mainly dependence on diversified economy. Their process of national modernization was impacted and pressed by outside force, and in contrast, the modernization of Nanai was earlier and higher than Hezhen; in other hand, the process was vanish and alienation of traditional national culture, and then the Hezhen nationality was assimilated by the Chinese, also the same of Nanai being assimilated by Russians.From the 17th to the middle of 19th century, Hezhen's traditional social culture was a primitive clan society on the single fishery and hunts economy and a fishery and hunt culture on fishery culture. The ecosystem environment of the eastern area of the drainage basin of Heilongjiang River provided material base for Hezhen's self-sufficiency nature economy, which characterized with "fishing in summer as food, hunting in winter as living", and supplementary with gathering. They bonded with "Halamukun" clan organization, and believed in Shaman religion. Hezhen people wore fish skin and animals' skin, ate meat of fish and animals, lived in Majiazi and cellar, and took birch bark boat, canoe and sleigh as vehicle. The Hezhen nationality had its own language, but had no letter. However, its folk literature Yimakan was very prosperous, which fully reflected the character of Hezhen's fishery and hunt culture and traditional concept of value. The Ching Dynasty governed themby blood relationship combined with regional organization, which were known as Gashan institution and "pay tribute of mink and receive silk".On the base of predecessor's study, and according to records of documents, the author concluded the change of Hezhen population after it became cross border ethnicity: among the three big groups, most part of Hezhen and Qiler groups were allotted Russia, Akani group and part of Qiler group still lived in our country. 21 of 39 clans were allotted to Russia; among 1828 households, 7092 persons, 1415 household, 5718 people were allotted to Russia, holding 80% of the total population. There were 413 households, 1374 people (not include whom were incorporated into the eight banners) were in our country, holding 20% of the total. Nanai is now the tiny nationality that has the most of population in the Far East of Russia (12023 people according to statistic in 1989), and Hezhen is a nationality with less population in China (4245 people accor...