Mount. Morin Dawa

Located in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Hulun Buir Grassland is one of the four largest grasslands in the world and regarded as the best on the planet. It is also the home of many ethnic groups, one of which is the Daur people famous for their singing and dancing talent and bravery and skill in battle.

Stamp with image of Daur people

According to the latest census (2000), the Daur people, one of the 56 ethnic groups in China, have a population of 132,394. Daur means "pioneer" and historically they were descendants of Khitan, an ancient nomad tribe who lived in the lower reaches of Heilongjiang River and founded the Liao Dynasty (916-1125).

Living on hunting, agriculture and fishing, the Daur people mainly inhabit the Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner in Hulun Buir, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang Province, while some live in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The Daur people have their own language, which is a Mongolian dialect of the Altai phylum though the language has no written form. The Daurs used to write in Manchu scripts during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), but since the Revolution of 1911 (the Chinese bourgeois democratic revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen which overthrew the Qing Dynasty), Mandarin has been used. Most of the Daurs used to observe Shamanism, some Lamaism.