Tuvans of China in the 21st Century: Ethnic Composition and Generic Discourse

Ethnic Tuvans of China are a small group living in the multinational Altai Aimag or Kazakh region of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of People’s Republic of China. Chinese Tuvans, despite the fact that they live in isolation from their mother ethnic group, continue to preserve their identity, unity, language and folk culture in a non-ethnic environment. The paper shows the modern dispersed settlement of Chinese Tuvans living in seven settlements of the Altai Aimag. The modern ethnic composition of Tuvans, consisting of 11 tribal groups, is characterized, in which there are cases of groups breaking up into small tribal divisions, as well as the unification of some tribal groups into one large group. It is noted that the Tuvans of Mongolia and Russia have the majority of tribal groups, which indicates their commonality and long-term cohabitation. However, the Tuvans of Mongolia have more similarities; they are characterized by the presence of the same generic divisions. The ideas about the ancestral group are considered, containing archaic views that people of the same genus have the “same bones and blood”, which is why there are certain prohibitions and rules of exogamy that operate in the Tuvan environment to this day. In the oral tradition of Tuvans, the tribal discourse has been studied, which is represented by legends about tribal groups and their divisions, the first ancestors of the tribal group and the history of the clans’ origin, which are accepted by listeners as reliable information.