so any of you hmong peeps familiar with the 'romance of the three kingdoms' novels? anyways, its a quasi-historical novel about the last days of the han dynasty where the chinese kingdom becomes divided into three competing kingdoms called wei, wu and shu. wei covers pretty much all of north china, shu covers what sichuan province is today and areas around it, while wu holds the yangtze valley west-east and areas south of it.

with all our talk of hmong peeps in the east and specifically hmong daw's connection to wu language, something interesting about the novel hit me. sun quan, who rules over the kingdom of wu, is said to have had red hair and blue eyes in the novel. he was born in the area where wu language would eventually dominate. im not saying he's hmong, because he's clearly a han, but i think he may have had some hmong blood to account for the red hair.

hmong people are known to naturally have all shades of blonde from light to red. the blue eye thing is hard to believe for sun quan and for hmong peeps but im throwing it out there so some hmong peeps who are die-hard about hmong blondes with blue eyes can get a giggle or two in. i also remember that in those old 80's kungfu movies, there would be times when they would have a guy with blonde hair in the story (wearing a wig of course), but it does signify that it may have been a memorable occurrence for the chinese when hmong peeps with blonde hair were still living around them. anyways here's pictures of blonde hmong peeps who uploaded themselves to tojsiab.com in the last month or two.

http://photo.itojsiab.com/photo_show.php?p...795c442636b55fb

http://photo.itojsiab.com/photo_show.php?p...2b6d3bead98a923

http://photo.itojsiab.com/photo_show.php?p...3bb19f2d8d9524d

http://photo.itojsiab.com/photo_show.php?p...db5e4b97fc2af39

http://photo.itojsiab.com/photo_show.php?p...bebc2ac9128303f

http://photo.itojsiab.com/photo_show.php?p...833517c45d31070

http://photo.itojsiab.com/photo_show.php?p...2374f342be9ed44

http://photo.itojsiab.com/photo_show.php?p...a27a0c99bff6710

damn, they're sum sexy exotic Hmong.

my theory - YELLOW PEOPLE (HUANG REN)..... neeg daj!! Now that I think about it..... yellow river people????? yellow Hmong people? LOL some of our ancestors did came from the Huang He.

there are blond and red hair Hmong here where i live... i wanted to take pictures of them, but i'm scared.

who says Hmong want to be white? Hmong people have always known that some of their people are yellow.
i have to say, it's beautiful to see a Hmong person with this physical feature. i've seen lots of them.
it's like "the red hair" europeans of Europe.

I'm JEALOUS when I see a natural blond Hmong person. When I see a fake blond Asian, I laughed.. LOL

Can you guys give me an explanation of the Hmong proverb "tsis pom dej dag siab tsis nqig"? Why is this proverb making reference to the Yellow River when according to genetics, our origin is clearly around the Yangtze?

If some Hmong were from the Huang He, i don't think that would be a wide spread influential thing to the whole of Hmong, which i presume majority were and are from the south, Yangtze.

I simply do not see this proverb and the connection with the Yellow River.

the english equivalent is like 'my heart's unsettled until i see the yellow river'. hmong people ended up at the yellow river by expansion from the yangtze river. they expanded from the central yangtze river east and then headed north. along this route they met, incorporated, shared, assimilated other cultures. somewhere in the east and north is probably where they met the ancestors of the hmu and qho xiong groups; like we were talking about with the gejia from the hmu group who carry traditions of hou yi from the dongyi culture. both hmu and qho xiong are genetically y-dna O3 people but are not dominant O3 M7 like hmong or O3 M134 like hans. everything points to us meeting them in the east/northeast because to the south of the yangtze are O2 dominant people.

I have seen discussion about Sun Quan and his hair's color in other forums. This is what I learn from other forums. In my opinion, it is just a mode of story-telling in ancient China. Street performances that started during ancient China and evolved till present day's operas may have an influence on the way a character is described to look like. Operas are a form of story-telling and there is a possibility that Luo Guan Zhong was influenced by the tales told by the operas about the heroes of the three kingdoms. All this are added by Luo Guan Zhong to the novel to spice up the stories.

This is how Sun Quan opera mask look like.

http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Opera/opera-03-034.html

In chinese operas, a red face character represents good and white face character evil.Sun Quan having white face and reddish beard might has something to do with his personality. I think the contrast in good and evil features are supposed to show Sun Quan as a kind of good villain, or at least a neutral.

Besides, if I'm not mistaken, Sun Quan's sister does not have red hair. So, its very unlikely in actual reality, Sun Quan has red hair. I think Guan Yu red face might be influenced by opera mask as well.
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Opera/opera-02-022.html

Anyway, I think it has something to do with opera influence on the novel rather than actual fact.

Interesting.


Does any other Miao group have an equivalent proverb?

my little sister use to have light color hair but as she grew older it became darker

i read a few books in college a few years back on hmong folktale all the books mention that hmong are from siberia and they eventually settle down in china thats prob why they have blond hair blue eyes