In Song, a Remnant of China’s Former Imperial Language

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/world/asia/china-manchu-xibe-language.html

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Manchu, the imperial language of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), may be effectively extinct, but a close cousin clings to life in an unlikely place: a collection of towns near China’s border with Kazakhstan, 2,800 miles from the language’s former stronghold in northeastern China.

Xibe, a dialect of Manchu, is spoken by thousands of people who live in the Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County, in the far western region of Xinjiang. They are descendants of a garrison of soldiers who were dispatched west more than 250 years ago by a Qing emperor, Qianlong, to protect the empire’s Central Asian border. It was an arduous, 18-month journey that took the soldiers and their families through some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain.

He Wenjun, a 72-year-old teacher, is among the dwindling number of people who can still read and write Xibe, a member of the Tungusic family of languages which is thought to be related to Turkish, Korean and Japanese. Mr. He credits Xibe’s survival to more than two centuries of isolation in a region largely populated by ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and Russians.

Before the arrival of television, Mr. He says, storytelling was a central element of Xibe social life, and a vital conduit for passing along history and tradition to the young. In this clip, Mr. He sings a folk song called “Xiao Qiao Cried for Zhou Yu,” an episode from the Ming dynasty novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” In it, the legendary beauty Xiao Qiao, or Little Qiao, mourns the death of her husband, the commander Zhou Yu.