Narrowly, it is the name of the ethnic group in the western part of ancient China, and broadly, it is the general name of the nomadic ethnic group in the western part of ancient China. The Qiang people mainly live in Maowen, western Sichuan, while the rest are scattered in Wenchuan, Lixian, Heishui, Songpan and other places. More than 1982,000 people (the fourth census in 1990). The Qiang people call themselves "Erma", which means "local people". Its ethnic origin can be traced back to the Zuo Qiang people more than 3,000 years ago. As early as 3,000 years ago, there were records of Qiang people in oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin Dynasty. They mainly lived in the northwest and Central Plains of China. Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Ran and (Ma + Long) tribes of the ancient Qiang people have lived in the northwest of today's Sichuan. In the Tang Dynasty, some of the Qiang people assimilated to the Tibetans, while others assimilated to the Han people. Today's Qiang people are one of the survivors of the ancient Qiang people. The Qiang people have no native language, they use Chinese, but they have their own language. The Qiang language belongs to the Tibetan-Burmese language family of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which is divided into two major dialects, North and South. Because there is no national language, its culture is handed down orally from generation to generation.