Introduction

The Southern Khams language that is spoken in the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China. The ISO Code is khg.

A large proportion of the population of Diqing prefecture is comprised of members of various minority people groups. Tibetans are the most numerous of these, but their numbers do not total a majority of the prefecture population. The 2010 census figure for the ethnic Tibetan population of Diqing is 129,496, equalling 32.36% of the total prefecture population. This is slightly less than the proportion of Tibetans listed by the 1990 census, which was 33%. Over 90% of this Tibetan population resides in just two of the three counties: Xianggelila and Deqin. In fact, though, Tibetans only constitute a majority population of one county, Deqing, where they are 80% of the population. In Xianggelila county they comprise only 41% of the population, and in Weixi Lisu Autonomous County, where the Lisu ethnic population forms a 54% majority, a mere 6% are Tibetan.
Altogether, ethnic minorities comprise 81.66% of the Diqing prefecture population, while ethnic Han Chinese, most of whom reside in urban areas, make up the other 18.34%. While ethnic Tibetans represent the largest minority population in the prefecture, their numbers are closely followed by the Lisu population which constitutes 26.72%. The Naxi and Yi minorities make up 11.60% and 4.19% of the prefecture, respectively. There are also a significant number of ethnic Bai people living in the county, though they, like the Han Chinese residents, also live almost exclusively in urban areas.
There is also a very small number of Hui Muslims. Some of them are traders and business people living in the urban enclaves, as many other Hui people do throughout China. But there is also a small population of rural Hui, living in two villages in the eastern part of Xianggelila county, on the slopes below Haba mountain. According to a story told to us by a person from one of these villages, the residents are descendants of Hui refugees who fled long ago from Dali, a city in west central Yunnan, far to the south of Diqing. That city was ruled by a Muslim kingdom for many years until it was attacked and conquered by the Qing dynasty in the mid-19th century. It is said that over a hundred thousand people were slaughtered in a holocaust of killing and looting that ensued in the sacking of the city. Thousands more fled for their lives. Among them were a group that eventually found themselves in the Gyethang Valley. They apparently settled there, among the Tibetan inhabitants, for a number of generations, until their Tibetan neighbors forced them out of the valley for one reason or another. It was after this that they founded the villages where they now live. However, they continue with a number of cultural practices that they picked up from the Tibetans, such as drinking butter tea and eating tsampa (roasted barley flour). They speak a dialect of Mandarin Chinese, but they report that they use a lot of words that are borrowed from local Tibetan dialects.

Tibetan Empire and early centuries of Tibetan settlement
The consensus of historical accounts indicates that the area comprising Diqing Prefecture was probably not occupied by Tibetans until the early expansion of the ancient Tibetan Empire in the 7th century CE. Archaeological sites in Weixi and Xianggelila Counties show that the area was inhabited since Neolithic times by people who were possibly related to ancestors of the modern day Qiang peoples.[1] Other archaeological finds in Deqin County show possible cultural links to Amdo, Central Tibet, Western Yunnan, and even North China.[2]
During the reign of King Songtsan Gampo (སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ།) in the 7th century, garrisons were sent to several parts of eastern Tibet, including Gyethang. The military post at the Iron Bridge Fort (铁桥镇) on the banks of the Jinsha River—between present-day Xianggelila and Weixi Counties—was considered to be the furthest southeast frontier of the Tibetan Empire.[3] The region was solidified as a part of the Tibetan Empire after the campaigns of King Dusong Mangje (འདུས་སྲོང་མང་རྗེ།) in 703 when soldiers of the Tibetan Empire settled in the area. They are considered by many to be the ancestors of the present-day Diqing Tibetan population (Corlin 1977:88).[4] It was therefore in the early 8th century that the Diqing area developed into a dominantly Tibetan ethnic and cultural domain. It is likely that most of the Tibetan-inhabited areas of the prefecture at the present time were settled by Tibetans as far back as this period of the 8th century. The linguist Krisadawan Hongladarom has remarked on the fact that some Tibetans in Gyethang "still claim that they speak a unique dialect similar to Old Tibetan" (2006: 2)[5]. In a related footnote, she continues: "One of my Gyethang informants proudly told me that Gyethang ancestors were descendants of [Songtsan Gampo (སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ།)]. This discourse is not unique only to Gyethang. Makley et. al. (1999)[6] also report that people in Amdo often think that their languages are related to the army sent to these outposts by this king."
The area was rarely politically unified, though, and often dominated by non-Tibetan regional political powers. For part of the 8th century, the area was dominated by the Nanzhao Kingdom, based in Dali, to the south. When the Tibetan Empire declined in the mid-9th century, and lost its hold on its far-flung territories, local Tibetan nobles retained control in Diqing. The general ethnic population patterns that currently predominate the area are said to have been roughly the same since the 10th century. That is, Tibetans in the majority in present-day Deqin County and Xianggelila County, north of the Jinsha River; Naxi to the southeast; and Lisu to the southwest in present-day Weixi County and beyond.[7]
When China and Tibet, and indeed most of Central Asia, were overrun by the Mongols in the 13th century, Diqing became part of the "Tibetan Regions" command of the Mongols. Gyethang was called Dandang (旦当 ) in the contemporary Mongol records and the place was specifically referred to as a Tibetan area.[8] For some time thereafter it remained under the political influence of the Yuan Dynasty.
The Ming Dynasty, which ruled China from the 14th to the 17th centuries, did not attempt to interfere in Diqing. But for a period of around two hundred years, during the 15th and 16th centuries, the Tibetans engaged in hostilities with the Naxi Kingdom, ruled by the powerful Mu clan which was sponsored by the Ming rulers. For a time the Mu armies occupied Gyethang Town, as well as the southern part of the Gyethang Valley, currently referred to as Xiao Zhongdian (小中甸)[9], or by its traditional Tibetan name, Yongto (ཡང་ཐང།，洋塘).
17th century
For the first half of the Qing Dynasty, there was little Chinese political or cultural influence in Diqing. It was mostly under the influence of Central Tibet and the Khushut Mongols of Qinghai, who, at the time, were the power behind the the Dalai Lama and the Gelugpa sect. During the reign of the 5th Dalai Lama, in particular, the Gelugpa sect was politically ascendant, establishing new monasteries, and conquering monasteries of other older Tibetan Buddhist sects, particularly the Kargyu sect, which had previously wielded the most influence in the area. It was during this time that the Tibetan Buddhist Gelugpa monastic sect, backed by the 5th Dalai Lama, established a large monastery, Gandan Sumtsenling (དགའ་ལྡན་སུམ་རྩེན་གླིང་དགོན་པ།，松赞林寺), in Gyethang. It was built in 1679 and at its peak of size and influence it is said to have contained around 2,000 monks.
18th and 19th centuries
The 5th Dalai Lama and the Gelugpa clergy began to exert significant political influence in the Diqing area. Gelugpa representatives were occasionally sent by the Dalai Lama to Gyethang to settle disputes stirred up by local chieftans.[10] In 1717 an army of Zunghar Mongols attacked the Khoshut Mongols in Lhasa, killing their rulers. They had come at the invitation of influential Tibetans who were unhappy with the Khushuts for deposing the 6th Dalai Lama.[11] This led directly to an invasion in 1720 by an army of China's Qing Dynasty sent to oust the Zunghars. This army entered Tibet via Kham in the east, and Diqing in the southeast. The Qing Dynasty rulers of that time had decided to take a more interventionist frontier policy, and as a result the Qing army set up a garrison of over 300 soldiers at Gyethang in 1724, which they called the Zhongdian Office (中甸厅).[12] This garrison built a fort there with mud walls and guard towers.[13] The Chinese did not try to take over the power or positions of the monastic authorities an Tibetan hereditary rulers, but they maintain a magistrate and a small garrison as an official presence in the town of Gyethang. With Qing officials and garrisons in place, some Han Chinese began to immigrate to the area as traders, miners, artisans, and farmers. Local Tibetan chieftans continued to hold significant political power (Corlin 1977:77), and the Gelugpa monastic sect continued to gain in size and influence from their base at Gandan Sumtsenling Monastery. According to contemporary local records, there were 1,329 monks in Gyethang in 1743, a majority of whom were members of the Gelugpa sect.[14]
20th century
The late 19th and early 20th centuries were to be a rather dark and violent period of Diqing's history. In 1905 an anti-Chinese rebellion broke out in the northern part of the prefecture, centered in Deqin county. F. Kingdon Ward, a British botanist and explorer, who travelled through the area shortly after the rebellion, claimed that around 500 Tibetans and Chinese died in the rebellion, among them a number of monks, some of whom were executed following the rebellion (Ward 1913:59).[15] After the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the new government of the Republic of China attempted to continue the Qing administrative policy in Diqing. In 1913 the district which had been called the "Zhongdian Office", under the Qing Dynasty, became Zhongdian County (中甸县) of Yunnan Province. An increasing number of Han Chinese migrants moved into Gyethang to take advantage of trade and mining opportunities. However, the new Republican Government's governance was quite ineffectual and it lacked any real control in northwest Yunnan and western Sichuan. Bandits multiplied in southwestern Sichuan and Gyethang town was sacked several times, and local chieftans fought their own skirmishes with one another. This early part of the 20th century is still regarded as a particularly lawless and anarchic period in the area's history.
During World War II, the Diqing area became important in the Allied struggle against the Japanese invasion of China. Much of the Chinese resistance had retreated west, first to Chongqing in Sichuan, and thence to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. Normal supply routes from the east having been cut off by the Japanese, the resistance armies, as well as Chinese civilians, had to be supplied from Burma and India. Some of this was done by air, made famous in particular by the American Army Air Force "Flying Tigers" unit. But many of the supplies also came overland via arduous routes through the mountains. Among these routes were ones which passed through both Deqin and Zhongdian (Xianggelila).[16]
In 1936 two corps of the Chinese Red Army, led by general He Long, had passed through Gyethang, crossing the Jinsha River at Benzilan (奔子栏，སྤོམ་ཙེ་རག།). Troops of the People's Liberation Army returned in 1950 to begin establishing the authority of the new communist government. This was the first effectual and widespread control over the area by a Chinese government. The area was designated the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Region (迪庆藏族自治区) in 1951, In 1957 it was changed to the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (藏族自治州， བདེ་ཆེ་བོད་རིགས་རང་སྐོང་ཁུལ།), within the administration of Yunnan Province. Gyethang town became Zhongdian County (中甸县，རྒྱལ་ཐང་རྫོང་།)—now named Xianggelila County (香格里拉县，སེམས་ཀྱི་ཉི་ཟླ་རྫོང་།)—and was made the prefectural capital.

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[1] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p. 11
[2] 迪庆旅游指南 (Diqing Tourist Guide 1993), p.87-88
[3] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p. 38
[4] Corlin, Claes. 1977. "A Tibetan Enclave in Yunnan: Land, Kinship, and Inheritance in Gyethang". in Brauen, Martin and Per Kvaerne (ed.), Tibetan Studies Presented at the Seminar of Young Tibetologists, Zurich, June 26-July 1, 1977.
[5] Hongladarom, Krisadawan. 2006. "Linguistic and Ethnic Diversity in Kham: Continuity and Change"
[6] Makley, Charlene, Keith Dede, Hua Kan, and Wang Qingshan. 1999. "The Amdo dialect of Labrang". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 22.1. Berkeley: University of California, 97-127.
[7] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p.44
[8] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p.46
[9] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p.171
[10] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p.105
[11] Wikipedia entry, "Lha-bzang Khan": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lha-bzang_Khan
[12] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p.159
[13] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p.171
[14] 迪庆藏族社会史 (History of Tibetan Society in Diqing), p.178
[15] Ward, F. Kingdon. The Land of the Blue Poppy: Travels of a Naturalist in Eastern Tibet. Cambridge University Press, 1913.
[16] 迪庆旅游指南 (Diqing Tourist Guide), 1993, p.74-75