Western Hunan locals living amid Huaxia Chinese during Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) had already been assimilated to Huaxia in all aspects of life. Yet those inhabiting the vales and mountains kept their own languages, distinct customs and communities[127]. After Tang Dynasty, the range of ‘Descendents of Pan Hu’ in the mind of mainstream Huaxia gradually expanded to include indigenous populations of more southern and south-eastern regions.
In the above historical documentations we can see that before the 10th century, 'the Hmong in classical Chinese archives designates either one or several southern ethnic groups known as ‘the descendants of Panhu\ These mountain tribes were not assimilated into Confucian culture, or to put it the other way, not being under direct control of the sovereignty of Chinese dynasties. It is not until the 14th century that the military expansion of the central government demanded direct political control of the South-western area including today’s West Hunan.
In the next section I am going to summarise the historical narratives in regard to the Hmong from the 14th to the 19th century. To my mind, this is the period when the ethnic identity was gradually constructed:
In many areas of China where local people formed considerable resistance against the spread of the power of the central government, a certain degree of autonomy remained while the local governing heads paid allegiance to the central government. It is called the Tusi Institution (Tusi zhidu 土司制度, lit. native chieftain institution). The local chieftainship was similar to the feudal lordship in Medieval Western Europe. Since the Tusi institution was established in West Hunan, the people under Tusi administration were thus indirectly governed by the central government, but the majority of the Hmong remained Taw barbarians’ outside the dynasty’s jurisdiction. Since the 14th century, Hmong people had appeared as a threatening local power. In the periods when the Han or the other ruling ethnic groups had evident economic development and population boom, or had to migrate and expand their settlements as dictated by the development policies of the central government, their confrontation with Hmong people usually led to fierce warfare. The military blockade line which was intended for the whole Hmong territory gradually advanced into the Hmong heartland during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), and finally formed a military defence line against the Hmong in the Wanli period (1573–1620). Later, the famous Hmong Frontier Wall (Miao jiang bianqiang 苗疆边墙, currently known as The South Great Wall) was built along this defence line[128]. The construction of the South Great Wall took over four centuries, through the process of which the central imperial government ideologically claimed that Raw Hmong beyond the wall to be an ungovernable population unworthy of including into the local autonomy governance connected to the central bureaucratic system. However, Tusi also had subtle but solid relationships with Raw Hmong, especially in economic and military communications. Some local chieftains developed military skills and improved their weapon manufactory through learning from Raw Hmong