Definition of Dongyi

Dongyi is a polysemous word roughly has three meanings:

1. Original meaning: people of the east. That is, the 囯 ancient Han people to the eastern peoples of the collective name. There are Huaiyi, Laiyi, bird yi, island yi, the sun yi and so on. Distributed in today's Anhui Province, Shandong Province, Jiangsu Province.

2. The word "yi" later came to refer to ethnic groups other than the Han.

3. "Yi", in the ancient Shandong dialect, sounds the same as "people", the original meaning is "a man with a bow" ("Shuowen Jiezi"), and China is the same word. The nature of the word changed from a geographical noun to a noun of cultural origin in the sense of the field of the origin of Chinese culture.

4. The characters for "east" and "yi" already appeared in the bone inscriptions of the Eastern Yi during the Longshan culture period in Shandong (about 4,600 to 3,300 years ago). (Ding Zaixian and Ding Lei, "Dongyi Culture and Shandong - Interpretation of Bone Carvings" (Chief Editor: Ding Zaibin), Chapter 19, Section 2, "Dong" on page 780, "Yi" on page 709, China Literature and History Publishing House, February 2012 edition). Attachment: Evolution of the bone inscriptions of the characters "east" and "yi":