Manchu people are descended from a warrior tribe in north China. After absorbing several Caucasoid races of Siberia, they moved southward and invaded China, overthrowing the former Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) and establishing the Qing Dynasty in 1644.

　　As an ethnic group originally living in forests and mountains in northeast China, Manchu people excelled in archery and horsemanship. Children were taught the swan-hunting art with wooden bows and arrows at six or seven, and teenagers learned to ride on horseback in full hunting gear, racing through forests and mountains. Women, as well as men, were skilled equestrians.

　　After the found of PRC in 1949, Manchu people are located in the northeast of China from Beijing into Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces. Smaller numbers live in central and western China with smaller pockets found in much of China.

　　According to the statistics of population in 1990, there were 9.8468 million Manchu people in China, which follows Zhuang as the second largest ethnic groups in China.

　　Like Han people and other ethnic groups in China, over 70 per cent of Manchu people are engaged in agriculture-related jobs. Their main crops include soybean, sorghum, corn, millet, tobacco and apple. They also raise tussah silkworms. For some Manchu people, living in remote mountainous areas, gathering ginseng, mushroom and edible fungus makes an important sideline. Most of the Manchu people in cities, who are better educated, are engaged in traditional and modern industries.

Manchu people have full status as an ethnic minority in China, which means they receive government encouragement for their culture.

　　Manchu people have their own script and language, which belongs to the Manchu-Tungusic group of the Altaic language family. Beginning from the 1640s, large numbers of Manchu moved to south of the Shanhaiguan Pass (east end of the Great Wall), and gradually adopted Mandarin Chinese as their spoken language. Later, as more and more Han people moved to north of the pass, many local Manchu picked up Mandarin Chinese too.

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