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The Miao in Bentley's miscellany | ||||||||
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Bentley's misscellany was a 19th century literary magazine 247 - He undertook (Yongzheng) to reduce the rebellious mountaineers, called the Miao-tse, who have raised and carried to success the present insurrection. Yongzheng boasted to have conquered them, but the extent of his conquest is to be doubted, from the admitted fact of his never having been able to make them consent to adopt the Tartar tail. 249 - In
the same spirit of resistance to the Mantchoos were the mountain tribes
of the Miao-tse, a tribe inhabiting the province of Koang-si. This province
is the Switzerland of China, consisting of a mass of mountains of great
height, including valleys, which grow cinnamon and rice. These mountaineers
defied all the attempts of the Tartar princes to reduce them, and they
have equally repelled every attempt of the bonze or Buddhist priest to
introduce the idol worship. In the same spirit they refused to shave their
hair, leaving the one lock or queue, which is the Tartar fashion, and
which their conquerors imposed upon the rest of the Chinese. In 1832
there were simultaneous insurrections in Formosa and in the Koang-si.
The cap, the distinguishing feature of the Chinese costume, was scrupulously
the same in Formosa and in the Koang-si, being a kind of red turban fastened
by metal pins. The government of Pekin acknowledged the identity of the
two insurrections; even in one of his proclamations it stigmatizes the
rebels of the Koang-s as asset of pirates from Fokien, who had taken refuge
in those mountains. |
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