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Manchu — the fight to keep it alive

Pallavi Aiyar

What is startling about the Ozymandian-like linguistic trajectory of Manchu is the rapidity with which it first rose to prominence and then declined to the verge of extinction.

ON AN early spring afternoon, cherry blossoms cut swirls of colour along the tree-lined avenue, to the west of Beijing's Drum Tower. Just off the road and down a warren of courtyards, two dozen young professionals sit gathered in a room, brows furrowed in concentration, notebooks in hand. They carefully copy out words in a strange, almost magical, rune-like script. A teacher who stands up front coaches them in pronouncing these words. The sounds are gentler than the sharp rise and fall of tonal Mandarin and there is something dusty and unused in their timbre.

The language is in fact Manchu and the majority of those gathered on this balmy Saturday afternoon are of Manchurian ethnicity. They are the descendants of the semi-nomadic tribesmen who ruled over the Chinese empire for two-and-a-half centuries but are today on the brink of losing their language, and with it, their unique identity.

The Manchu dynasty was known as the Qing (1644-1911) and was the last imperial house to rule from Beijing. Under the Qing reign, the size of the Chinese empire almost doubled growing to roughly match the contours of contemporary China.

The Qing instituted policies aimed at maintaining the Manchu as a distinct people. Thus, they ordered their subjects to braid their hair in a queue or pigtail as was the Manchu custom. However, their efforts at maintaining a clear-cut Manchu identity ended in failure as intermarriage and other forms of contact led to a gradual assimilation of the Manchu with the majority Han population.

By the 19th century, spoken Manchu was already fading away, rarely used even in the Imperial court. But written Manchu continued to be used for keeping records and communication between the emperor and officials until the collapse of the dynasty.

One more ethnic minority

Following the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912, the once elite Manchus were relegated to becoming just one of the more than 50 ethnic minorities. Their numbers were overwhelmed by the dominant Han, who today make up some 93 per cent of the country's 1.3 billion people, according to official statistics.

There are now about 10 million Chinese citizens classified as ethnic Manchus, most of whom live in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang as well as in Beijing. They are however indistinguishable by appearance from the Han and with the Manchu language on the verge of falling silent, it is possible that even their consciousness as a distinct people will disappear before long.

What is startling about the Ozymandian-like linguistic trajectory of Manchu is the rapidity with which it first rose to prominence and then declined to the verge of extinction. Although it is difficult to ascertain the exact figures, there are probably less than 100 native speakers of Manchu left in China, almost all of them over 70 years. The numbers of those who can speak and write are even fewer.

But the Manchu language is not going down without a fight, aided by a new weapon in its arsenal: the Internet. Twenty-three-year-old Wang Shuo, an ethnic Manchurian who has spent the last few years learning Manchu, explains that although he was interested in the language of his ancestors growing up, he had no natural peer group to share his interest with. His parents, despite being Manchus, themselves did not speak the language; nor was he taught it in school.

It was only during his university years in Harbin, capital of the Liaoning province, that Wang Shuo discovered a website that taught the language and was able to connect with others who shared his passion.

The website called manchusky.com today boasts of some 3,000 users. In order to extend its influence from the virtual to the real world, it has begun to hold free Manchurian classes in Beijing on Saturday afternoons. Wang Shuo, who spends his weekdays working as a construction designer for the rash of new skyscrapers in the Chinese capital, teaches these classes at the weekend.

"I read an encyclopaedia once and under the section on Manchurians, it said that the Manchus used to have their own language," Wang says, his slight frame quivering with anger at the memory. "That really made me mad."

On the afternoon that your correspondent attends the class, Wang Shuo is taking a break and a new teacher, Li Fei Xong, also 23, takes class. Among the two dozen-odd students, only two are Han Chinese who attend the class out of intellectual curiosity. The rest are Manchus, for whom the classes are a way of connecting to their historical identity.

Li began his exploration of the Manchu language on the Internet as well. He has been learning for two years but it has not been easy to persevere, he confesses, because there is no "natural environment" for the language.

Efforts in vain?

With Manchu lacking any practical use, even those running the free classes are aware that their efforts may well be in vain. Wang Shuo recalls how while in university he organised a group of fellow Manchus to study the language together. "We were 20 to begin with but by the end of a few months there were only three of us left," he says wryly.

"I can't predict the future but all we are aiming for is to try and ensure that our language does not go extinct with our generation," concludes Li.

Adds Gao Heng, a 27-year-old lawyer who has recently signed up for the weekend classes: "I am doing this so I can teach my children the language. My parents had already forgotten and couldn't teach me, but I want to — in fact I must be able to — teach my children."

Further efforts by the students to boost the fading language include having business cards printed with contact information printed in Manchu alongside Chinese. "I think the only hope for Manchu is to slowly get people accustomed to seeing the script again," says Li Dan, an AIDS awareness activist and one of the main organisers of the weekend classes. Towards this end, Li Dan is busy preparing Manchu versions of HIV awareness posters, which he plans to use during his educational campaigns in the northeastern parts of China where Manchus are most populous.

However, despite the guarded optimism of those at the class, with so few left who actually speak Manchu, most experts in China agree that it is only a matter of time before the language dies out totally.

There is a lone hope for Manchu, however, and it lies in another closely related language Xibo, still spoken by upwards of 30,000 people in the Ili region of the Xinjiang province. The Xibo are descendants of an ethnic group that was allied to the Manchu and sent by them to what was the newly conquered region of Xinjiang in the 18th century.

As a language, Xibo is virtually identical to classical Manchu except for a few variations in pronunciation and writing. The Xibo people, however, consider themselves and their language distinct from the Manchu. Moreover, even Xibo is in retreat under relentless pressure from Chinese. Already schools in the area have cut down the number of years the local language is taught at the primary level from five to three.

Wang Shuo is planning to spend the next six months in Xinjiang amongst the Xibo to experience what it is like to live in a culture where a Manchu-related language is still spoken in a natural environment. He has no financial support and will use the money he has saved from his year working in Beijing to fund the trip.

"I know I am being more idealistic than practical," he says, "but it's better to try than give up too early."

If Manchu disappears it will only be one amongst a mass extinction that some experts forecast will lead to the loss of half of the world's 6,800 languages by the end of this century. All that then left of the language of what was arguably once the world's most powerful dynasty will be millions of dust-collecting documents in Chinese archives or, as the latest twist in the tale suggests, digital copies on the Internet.

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