"Discovery" From Disappearance

Although it is often thought that the boundaries of the Zhuang people became increasingly blurred and even disappearing from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China,in reality the boundaries are still evident.During the period of the Republic of China,various factors such as policies,academia,and revolution shaped the Zhuang people making their appearance more and more three-dimensional and closer to the Zhuangzu as a modern ethnic group.It was the shaping of the Zhuang people in the period of the Republic of China that provided a profound basis for the identification of Zhuangzu in the 1950 s.The formation of Zhuangzu from Zhuang people is not a political initiative of New China that some Western scholars believe,but a long-term and continuous deepening of cognition and identity.This paper will discuss Zhuang people shaping in the Republican period from three perspectives: folklore,language and ethnic history.Through the use of documentary synthesis and ethnographic fieldwork,this paper seeks to bring today and the past,field and documentary,into sharp contrast,blending ephemeral and diachronic research to reveal and analyse the rich and intricate shape of the boyish people during the Republican period,and to clarify its loose ends,hoping to study how the Zhuang people regarded by the New Guangxi clique regime as assimilated to the Han people could become the incomparably strong "Zhuangzu".