The Nationality Who Cherishes Soil Like Gold  As one of the Chinese ethnic minorities, the Maonan nationality now has 71,968 people, mainly inhabited in the Huanjiang Maonan Autonomous County in the northwest of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The rest live scattered in Nandan County, Yao Autonomous County of Du'an, Hechi Prefecture and other counties.
The Maonan nationality lives close to the east foot of Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, which is covered with lava and ranges of green mountains. The middle part is the Maonan Mountain, the northeast the Ninety Thousand Mountains, the northwestern part the Phoenix Mountain and the southwest the Large Stone Mountain. Covered with dense green forests and woods, and in the advantage of subtropical climate, it is suitable for agriculture and farming.
The Maonan nationality relies mainly on agriculture, with raising industry and sideline production as a complement. They mainly plant coarse grains, but people in a few areas plant rice.
Maonan people call themselves "Anan", meaning "locals," which proves that they are the aborigines in the area. Officials before the Tang Dynasty, and actors in the dynasties of Song, Yuan, and Ming have origins with the ancestors of the Maonan nationality. In historical records, many names once came up, such as "Maotan" and "Maonan" in different Chinese characters or tones.
The Maonan nationality has its own language, a linguistic subfamily of Dong branch of the Tibetan family. It has no characters. Maonan folk songs once were spelled and recorded by Chinese pronunciations and meanings, which was called "local custom character". Most of the Mannan people understand Zhuang language and Chinese. Chinese now is in common use.
In the modern history of China, the Maonan people once actively supported and joined the Revolt of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to resist against the Qing Dynasty. They organized "Hui Party" to fight the Qing army and landlords for more than twenty years. In the New-democratic Revolutionary period, Maonan people showed their warm support for the Red Army, and participated enthusiastically in resisting against Japan, launched actively guerrilla wars under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, to fight against Kuomintang. They have made great contributions to the founding of New China.
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