Xianbei

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The Xianbei (Simplified Chinese: 鲜卑; Traditional Chinese: 鮮卑; pinyin: Xiānbēi; Wade-Giles: Hsien-pei) were a significant nomadic people residing in modern Manchuria and eastern Mongolia, or Xianbei Shan. They were descendants of Donghu, a historic term for Greater Khingan, before migrating into areas of the modern Chinese provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Liaoning. Possibly some tribes of these people also lived in ancient Eastern Heilongjiang or Hulun Manchu Imperial province, currently Khabarovsk and Amur regions in the Russian Far East.

The Xianbei people actually consisted of a federation of sizeable non-Han groups of which the most important was the Tuoba (拓跋). They first became a significant part of Chinese culture during the Han Dynasty, where they occupied the steppes in Mongolia, Hebei and Liaodong. After the fall of the Han dynasty, the Xianbei formed a number of empires of their own, including the Yan Dynasty, Western Qin, Southern Liang and most significantly, the Northern Wei (see Sixteen Kingdoms). By the time of the Tang dynasty they had largely merged with Han populace by adopting Chinese customs, administration and language. The emperors Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty and Li Yuan of the Tang Dynasty were born of Xianbei mothers and therefore half-Xianbei.^{[citation needed]}

A Chinese ruler^{[citations needed]} of Xianbei origin was recorded as having had fair hair as were later some Tatars^{[citations needed]} from the same area, as well as some other Tungusic peoples.^{[citations needed]}Mongol and Khitan may be the offspring of Xianbei according to Chinese historical records.