Origins of the Zhuang peoples

The Zhuang are China’s largest minority group and they mainly reside in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, west of Guangdong province, east of Yunnan and borders Vietnam. A great number of the Zhuang live in villages in the mountainous areas, specifically in the western two thirds of Guangxi. The Zhuang may also be found in most of Guangxi’s major cities, in each case making up to a third of the population while the remaining live in Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou, and Hunan Provinces.

The Zhuang are an offshoot of a Thai-related people group that over 2,000 years ago who existed over a large area of Southern China. The Zhuang probably emigrated from the south in Vietnam. Archaeological remains in Bai-lian Dong near Liu-zhou and Zhen-pi Yan near Guilin have turned up burial sites with burial styles common not to China but to Vietnam. These burial styles also suggest a relationship between the Zhuang and the Haobinhian (9000-5600 BC) and Bacsonian (8300-5900 BC) cultures of Vietnam.