The Daur people are a Mongolic-speaking East Asian ethnic group in Northeast China. The Daurian form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized in the People’s Republic of China.
They numbered 131,992 according to the latest census (2010) and most of them live in Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner in Hulun Buir, Inner Mongolia, and Meilisi Daur District in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang of China.
There are also some near Tacheng in Xinjiang, where their ancestors were moved during the Qing dynasty. In China, before couples from Daur can set the date of their wedding, they must observe a tradition that involves the killing of a chick.
In order to set a wedding date, the bride and groom are required to partake in an unusual selection process that requires them to kill and gut a baby chick together, with the same knife (they both have to be holding it simultaneously).
The couple must then inspect the innards of the chick until they locate the liver. If the liver is in good condition and not in any way diseased then they can set the date, if the liver is of poor quality then they must repeat the process until the satisfactory liver is found!
The couple takes a knife and together kill and gut the baby chicken before inspecting its liver.
If the chick’s liver is in a healthy condition, the couple can set a date for their wedding but if they discover that the chick’s liver is of poor quality or diseased they must repeat the process until they find a healthy liver.
Mongolia still has human rights issues around the exploitation of children. Every year 14 million girls are married worldwide. One in seven girls in the developing world is married before her 15th birthday – some as young as eight or nine.
There is a very noticeable hierarchic structure. People sharing the same surname are in groups called hala, they live together with the same group, formed by two or three towns.
Each hala is divided into diverse clans (mokon) that live in the same town. If a marriage between different clans is made, the husband continues to live with the clan of his wife without holding property rights.
During the winter, the Daur women wear long dresses, generally blue in color and boots of skin which they change for long trousers in summer. The men dress in orejeros caps in fox or red deerskin made for winter. In the summer, they cover the animal’s head with white-colored fabrics or straw hats.
