Hu (people)

Hu statues from Wu Baizhuang tomb (吳白莊), Late Eastern Han period (2nd century CE), Linyi, Shandong.

Hu (Chinese: 胡; pinyin: Hú; Wade–Giles: Hu; IPA: [xǔ]), Huren (胡人, "Hu people") or Huzu (胡族, "Hu clans"), was a rather vague umbrella term used in Ancient China to describe non-Sinitic peoples, particularly steppe nomads, from Inner Asia. The Hu were usually tribal confederations from the great grasslands of the Mongolian plateau and the Western Regions, with a nomadic pastoralist lifestyle and a strong militant horse culture specializing in mounted archery and cavalry warfare.

According to Hill (2009):

The term hu 胡 was used to denote non-Han Chinese populations. It is, rather unsatisfactorily, commonly translated as 'barbarian'. While sometimes it was used in this general way to describe people of non-Han descent, and carried the same negative overtones of the English term, this was not always the case. Most frequently, it was used to denote people, usually of Caucasoid or partial Caucasoid appearance, living to the north and west of China.

According to Di Cosmo, the Chinese considered the Hu as "a new type of foreigner" and that "this term, whatever its origin, soon came to indicate an 'anthropological type' rather than a specific group or tribe, which the records allow us to identify as early steppe nomads. The Hu were the source of the introduction of cavalry in China."

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