Utilizing and Creating Indigenous Children’s Literature to Reclaim the Endangered Hoche Language

by Jue Wang

I know I should maintain my good grades on the three subjects, and my teacher(s) and parents also want me to keep up my performance, but I want to learn Hoche and speak Hoche. Rather, I am becoming Han. 

– Yue, first-grader in a Hoche Elementary School

This sentiment was expressed by a Hoche child I worked with in my ethnographic field study with the minoritized Indigenous Hoche community in Northern China. My research was focused on exploring the literacies of Hoche first-graders, including efforts made by teachers and the local and federal governments to implement Indigenous Hoche language revitalization. The Hoche people, also known as “Nanai,” are an ethnic minority group that mainly resides in Raohe, Huachuan, Fuyuan, and Jiamusi counties in China’s northeastern regions. Of all ethnic minority groups in China, the Hoche are one of the smallest; according to the data from the Seventh National Census in 2020, the Hoche population is 5,373 persons. The Hoche language, which belongs to the Manchu-Tungus groups of the Atlas language family, has no system of writing or phonetic symbols (Zheng, 2010).

Currently, because of the widespread use of the Mandarin language, only a small number of Hoche people can speak the Hoche language, and the majority of them are seniors. Based on the data from the National Language Resource Monitoring and Research Center of Minority Languages (2024), an average of 4.7 percent of the total Hoche population use their native Hoche language, which is categorized as critically endangered.

With a long history of making a living by fishing and hunting, the Hoche live near rivers and have developed sophisticated skills to catch fish and hunt wildlife. Known as the “fish-skin tribe,” Hoche are experts at using fish skin to make clothing, fashion accessories, art, tourist souvenirs, and other items. Until the 1950s, the Hoche largely wore the fish-skin clothes that represent their unique fishing culture and survived by subsisting off the land. Since they have no written characters, historically the Hoche have used Yimakan storytelling and fish-skin art to record and transmit their unique culture, including their religion, ceremonies, and events (Gao & Xie, 2018). In my research, I argue that recognizing the literacies of the Hoche is tied to oral, artistic, and craft traditions (Wang, 2023).