China is a unified multi-ethnic country, comprising 56 nationalities such as Han, Mongolian, Hui, Tibetan, Uygur, Miao, Yi, Zhuang, Buyi, Korean, and Manchu, etc. The policy that all of the nationalities are equal has become a national practice.

Han people comprise the largest population among all of the nationalities, making up 91.59% of the country total population. The other 55 nationalities called ethnic minorities. The fifth national census (up to Nov. 1, 2000) shows the population of all of the minorities is 106, 430,000, accounting for about 8.41% of the national population.

Although the ethnic minorities are small in population, they are widely dispersed across the country, mainly in the Northwest, Southwest and Northeast, Uygur, a people good at dancing and singing, mainly live in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Mongols, distributed on Inner Mongolian Plateau, are called "people of grassland". Tibetan people by and large live on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as "eagle of plateau". Oroqens inhabit Xing'anling mountains, which earns them the name "people on mountains".

For thousands of years, Chinese of various nationalities experienced different natural, historical and social conditions, which formed their own distinct customs.