China by Harry Alverson Franck — Read

The halfway station on the ancient trail between Yunnanfu and the Yang-tze is the walled city of Chaotung. I left most of my baggage there and went on a side-trip to the eastward. That was the only way to see Kweichow, the most isolated province of China, and I had determined to visit all eighteen provinces. Besides, the western part of that province is noted for its wonderful scenery, and-most important of all from my point of view-many of the tribesmen of China live there.

Long before the Chinese conquered what we now call China, many other tribes or races of people occupied that territory. In a way they were much like the Indians in America, and the conquering was very much the same. That is, the Chinese gradually defeated the tribes in the north and the east, and the conquered people either were absorbed, by marrying with the Chinese, or they fled south and west. That is probably why there are many dialects along the coastal strip of land between Shanghai and Indo-China. The descendants of the people who fled south, and were finally conquered when the ocean stopped them from fleeing farther, kept their own languages, more or less mixed with Chinese.