Habitat

The Kirgiz ethnic group is one of the 56 ethnic groups in China and mainly inhabits in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Kirgiz forefathers lived upstream of the Yenisei River 2,000 years ago before gradually scattering southwest, to areas currently inhabited by Kirgiz ethnic people that over time have been fused with local Turkic and Mongolian tribes.

Population

The ethnic minority has a population of 160,823, accounting for less than 0.0123 percent of China’s total number, according to China’s fifth population census in 2000.

Language

The Kirgiz group has their own language (Kirgiz), which stems from the Turkic language branch of the Altaic language family.

Customs

Their holy totems include the snow leopard, deer (buhu in Kirgiz) and wolf.

Kirgiz people do not eat pork, in accordance to their religious beliefs, and enjoy dairy products.

White, the color of their beloved sheep and major nutritional source, milk, is the favored among Kirgiz people. It represents fortune, luck and holiness.

When two people become engaged, the female will bind a white flower onto the horse of the male. At the wedding, white powder is sprinkled onto newly-weds as part of the traditional marriage custom.

Festivals

The majority of Kirgiz people are observers of Islam.

As such, they celebrate Islamic festivals including Eid Adha and Eid al-Fitr. They observe their own cultural festivals such as Dolobozo festival. It is held from March 6 to 9 in memory of a national hero called Dolobozo, who led 40 soldiers to rebel against rulers of the time. They also celebrate Nawluz festival, which falls around March 22 and marks the ringing-out of the old year in spring.

National epic

Kirgiz people have their own national epic called Manas. It includes eight parts, each depicting eight generations of Manas’ family. It is honored as one of China’s three heroic epics; the other being the Tibetan epic, Gesar, and the Mongolian epic, Jangar.